A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

New Product Spotlight: Chicken of the Sea No Drain Tuna

Chicken of the Sea tuna, the standard my whole life for tuna sandwiches and tuna casseroles, has a new product: no drain.  I grew up on the oil-packed tuna, switched to the water-packed version as an adult to save calories, but am now an ardent fan of the no drain version.

I'll let you in on a little pet peeve of mine. You know how after chicken or tuna salad sits for a little while there's that sort of watery stuff in the bottom of the container that you have to mix back in.  As much as my intellectual mind knows it's just the extra liquid from the tuna and what-not forming that, nothing bad at all, but my emotional brain always thinks "Ewwww."  I know. It's a teeny tiny thing but it bugs me. 

The No Drain tuna takes care of that problem. Even after sitting in the fridge for two days, the tuna salad I made with it was still nicely homogenous in texture, hearty to the bite, and with no weeping. I also liked that the flavors (mayo, mustard, pickle relish)  I mixed in with it stayed very crisp and true, without getting watered down or needing extra spices to correct for the added mositure I don't always get completely drained out of the water or oil-packed tunas.

Chicken of the Sea No Drain Tuna--Definitely a thumbs up at our house!  Can't wait to use it in the tuna casserole and other recipes.

Recipe after the click.

Thanksgiving Sides: Ozarks-style Slow Cooker Dressing/Stuffing

 

One of my favorite Thanksgiving tricks is to throw the dressing/stuffing into the crockpot.  It saves room in the stove, you can fix it and not worry about it, and it cooks up deliciously. Is it "dressing" or is it "stuffing" at your house?  I live in and was raised in southwest Missouri and while we use both terms, my family tends to stick with the southern version:  "dressing" while most of the rest of the country, it's my understanding, usually calls it "stuffing." Either way, it's yummy carb-licious.

Speaking of delicious, my favorite dressing has a couple of extras: chopped sweet apples and Missouri black walnuts in a southern cornbread base. English walnuts are a great option too but black walnuts are native to our American Midwest and more than 65% of those are grown in Missouri, with the largest black walnut processor, Hammons Nut, residing in Stockton, Missouri, just a rock skip from Springfield, Black walnuts are a treat we've grown up having plenty of and loving.  For the uninitiated, like the differnece between cream cheese and goat cheese, black walnuts have all the creaminess of an English walnut but with a little more zip.  One of my dearest memories of my mother was how she would hand-shell bushels of black walnuts through the fall that we kids had scavenged from the woods around our house, and then use them in Christmas cookies and candies.  As a child I took it for granted, as an adult I admire her tenacity.  Hand-shelling nuts is not the most fun job in the world but we loved the final result, for sure!

 
Mrs. Cubbison's Stuffing mix is spiced in a way that goes particularly well with the apple/black walnut combination, I've found. It's slightly sweet and very savory which highlights both the sweetness and savoriness of the fruit and nuts, which seems to me to be the quintessential tastes of fall.

Mrs. Cubbison's, a true American success story, was started by Mrs. Cubbison in 1890's as a bread bakery, then moved to crackers, and eventually to stuffing (dressing).

For tons of Thanksgiving recipes, decorating ideas, and table setting ideas, please go to www.thanksgivingtips.com for photos, recipes, and videos.

 Mrs Cubbison's:  Facebook Page

 

Garden of Eatin' Tortilla Chips: The Taste Test

We tried out a new-to-me tortilla chip brand at our Halloween Party. They're from Garden of Eatin'  made from several varieties of organic corn (or sweet potatoes!) with no transfats or preservatives.

We ate them alone, with guacamole, with spinach dip, and crushed on top of our chili.  The official feedback?  Everyone liked them both but everyone (except Dave, haha) LOVED the sweet potato chips the best.  That hint of sweet combined really well with everything we ate them with from the avocado to the chili.  They are delicious.  These chips come in 20 varieties, will be my choice from now on, particularly the sweet potato variety. So yummy. 

Easy to find, they're available in most local grocery stores, including the Price Cutters, Dillon's, Target, and Mama Jeans,  here in our town.

Last Minute Pantry Pasta Salad with Vidalia Onion Dressing

One of the great things about summer cooking, of course, are all the fresh vegetables for salads of all kinds, including pasta salads.  However, in my own experience, there are times when I don't have the time to shop and chop, or I've simply run out of time and need a quick pot luck salad that tastes so good people don't necessarily notice the missing fresh cucumbers that are de riguer in summer pasta salads.

I think of this as one of my tricks or cheats and smile as I simply say "thank you" to the compliments anytime I show up with this dish.  All it takes is a few ingredients hanging out in the pantry as my "Oh crap, I forgot I needed to make something for work!" saviors.

Most of the pasta salad recipes I've seen and made call for either bottled Italian or Creamy Italian dressing or a home-made version.  My personal quirk is to use a wonderful dressing made here in the Ozarks by Ott's, originally born as a small cafe in Carthage, Missouri on Historic Route 66.  The restaurant went out of business but the Mr. Ott began bottling his famous dressing, named appropriately Original Dressing (a red, sweet vinaigrette unlike anything else!) and now bottle more than 34 dressings along with a line of BBQ sauces for Branson, Missouri's Silver Dollar City theme park. 

Review: Peeled Snacks Dehydrated Fruit

 

 www.peeledsnacks.com

 

 I was asked to review a new dehydrated fruit snack called "Peeled Snacks" so at our last Knitting Party I set out two bowls of fruit.  "A", the Peeled Snacks and "B" from a bag of Sun-Maid dried fruit I usually keep on hand,  I marked neither with brand names let people snack on them throughout the evening, along with our normal appetizers and beverages. I only asked that at some point they try fruit from both bowls.

As the party broke up, I asked each of the eight people (plus Gene and myself) what they thought of each.

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

We Have a Winner for the Nakano Summer Splash Giveaway!

When I said I was going to have Gene pull a name out of a hat, I meant it literally! Behold, niece Sydney's kindergarten art project: magician's hat with wand AND pink bunny. Pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself, the proud Auntie.  If you look closely you can see her name upside down in silver glitter, or what remains of the silver glitter a decade later!  Thanks for letting Aunt Gonnie exploit your childhood memories, Sydney! 

Gene was indeed the honest-to-goodness designated "name puller" and since no one sent the bribes he tried to hijack, he was also honest, even closing his eyes to pull out one of those multi folded  slips of paper.

And the winner of the $25.00 AmEx gift card and bottle of Nakano seasoned rice vinegar, courtesy of Nakano is:

Congratulations Jessie!!!

Much thanks to all who signed up for the Nakano enewsletter and/or left links to great recipes featuring Nakano seasoned rice vinegars.  

To see the original post, click here:  Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegar Contest 

 

Baked Chicken Wings with Anheuser Busch Wing Sauce

 

Nieces Jordan and Sydney came over one night last week and while Jordan (thank you, Girlie!) mowed the lawn, Sydney made baked chicken wings for dinner. Honestly, out of all the things I've cooked over the years that most people never have, one of the things I've never made that most people have is chicken wings.  We just got a not great blood report back on Gene so we're steadfastly back on the heart diet, trying to eat less refined carbs and less fat so I also was going for baked wings rather than fried.  Sort of a two-for one experiment.

   One of the interesting things I found out about Sydney is maybe a clue to how she learns. We all learn better one way or the other:  verbally or from writing. I think Jordan is more of a verbal girl but what I didn't realize until that night was that Sydney is more of a reading/writing girl.  Sydney was a couple of months premature (ruptured membranes and other complications) and spent a week on a vent in our NICU. She has residual hearing loss and learning challenges from her birth.  One of her weaknesses is short term memory loss especially when following multi-step directions.

I had the coating bowls set out in order but only three: milk, whole wheat white flour mix, egg/water, so she had to go back to the middle for another dredging of flour before laying the wings on the baking sheets.  It really threw her.  She couldn't remember the fourth step. I tried verbally cueing her "1, 2, 3, 4, and in the pan" and she remembered better but still not enough to finish all the wings without prompting.  On a hunch, I grabbed a pad of sticky notes and a magic marker and labeled the bowls "1", "2, 4", "3".  From then on she had no problems remembering the steps and finished getting the rest of the wings on the pans.

It was a beautiful "AHA!" moment!

Jordan got to be our first taste-tester but it was a chore for her in between us yelling at her to eat it so I could take pic and her complaining "But it just came out of the oven--it's hot!"  Geez, such a little thing. Doesn't she know she's supposed to be willing to burn herself for my blog?  The blog is ALL IMPORTANT!~  Hehehehe

Thanks for being our taste-tester, LoLo!  You were a good sport!

Chilled and Dilled: Cucumber & Fresh Corn Soup

 

The perfect soup for a perfectly hot and humid day here in the Ozarks.  My inspiration was the fresh dill that came with our CSA this week and the heat.  Something about long hot days makes me crave cucumbers. They're like the Tylenol of the vegetable world--they'll reduce that summer day feverishness quickly.

Homemade Refried Anasazi Beans

The menu theme for niece Jordan and nephew Isaac's birthday party last week was Tex-Mex, with build-your-own taco bar, refried beans, white queso & chips, 7 Layer Dip, and then the snack food cake for dessert.  One of my adventures for the party was making refried beans from scratch.

I learned some interesting things in my research. Although most people do "fry" or recook the cooked beans in a skillet in lard, shortening, or oil, smashing them down as they go, the term "refried" is actually a mistranslation of Spanish "refritos" meaning "well fried", the "re" in Spanish meaning "well", not "again, like in English.  Also, with more research, I found out that the point of frying isn't to make anything crispy, it's not about being fried at all.  The point is to mix some fat into the beans to create a creamier texture and mouth feel.

Keeping all of that in mind, I created a healthier refried bean recipe that got rave reviews at the party and, even better, from Gene who (isn't a huge legume fan) asked me to prepare them this way more often because he liked them so much. 

On a delicate note, I chose the anasazi beans not only for the slightly sweeter taste than pintos but also because they have less of what generally produces, ahem, odorousness in folks after consuming.  Listen, I knew I'd be hanging out with these people all afternoon.  I may be many things but I am not a stupid woman. 

For more information on the Anasazi beans, please click here: Anasazi Beans