A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

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

Pavia's Poached Egg Soup

Another recipe from Ciao Italia:  Five Ingredient Favorites--can you tell I REALLY like this cookbook?  Gene and I both loved this soup.  It's sooooooooo simple but so comforting and rich without being terrible for you.

I made two different versions. The recipe calls for chicken or beef broth.  I used chicken broth left over from a roasted chicken (so much better than canned!) and beef broth leftover from a Sunday roast where I'd taken the leftover drippings, onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes and whizzed them in the blender before freezing. This made for a thick gravy type broth. I'd not been sure what I was going to do with it but it's a perfect liquid for this soup.

I think of this as a "Sunday night, OMG, I don't want to cook" kind of soup. Hearty enough to be satisfying without being junky food or labor intensive.

And that, my friends, is the last recipe I'm going to post. Go buy this book. You'll be glad you did (like I'm glad someone gave it to me as a birthday gift!)

Fennel, Carrot, and Apple Salad

 

Another recipe I made from the Ciao Italia: Five Ingredient Favorites from the other night that was somewhat a hit at our house.  The salad is great. The dressing was simple and fantastic. The only problem was me. Fennel is one of those vegetables I try really hard to like but I just don't care for the taste of licorice so it's not the recipe's fault.  I will make the salad again except I'll probably substitute jicama or chopped celery or maybe even cabbage but still use the carrots, apple, and the dressing.

New Cookbook: Ciao Italia, Five Ingredient Favorites

 
Ciao Italia: Five Ingredient Favorites by Mary Ann Esposito, Host of PBS show "Ciao Italia"

I received a copy of this cookbook around my birthday and have been wanting to try a couple of things since it hit my hands. Although I enjoy cooking, and love cooking the long way around with multi-step, long prep recipes, there are times when I like to throw dinner together in an easier manner and with fewer ingredients, like on my sleep days after working all night.   Sometimes less really can be more.

The basic premise of the book, as a matter of fact, is that less can be more with a rule of five. Five basic pantry items like olive oil, dried pasta, canned tomatoes, onions, and red wine, or five refrigerator basics that include high quality cheese.  From basic items you can create simple but satisfying meals.

Yesterday was my test run. I'd worked the night before in Pediatrics and was worn out even after sleeping seven hours. (You think one cranky sick six month old is harrowing, try multiplying that by a half dozen at one time. grin. ) But even with a draggy butt, I was determined to continue my quest this year for wholesome food and not give in to the convenience of the drive thru.  Did making pasta scare me considering I'm trying to eat healthier and lose weight?  No, because my goal this year is to teach myself to eat good wholesome NORMAL food but to do it in a smart way. With pasta, it's about the ingredients and the portion size.  So many formal diets make pasta and fruit out to be evil.  NO, carbs are not evil. If anything can be pointed a finger at it's the ginormous restaurant portions that we've come to think of as normal. 

Already having the five ingredients in my pantry and fridge, in under 30 minutes last night I was able to prepare:  Coal Miner's Spaghetti (Carbonara) and the Fennel, Apple, and Carrot Salad, then I added a side of steamed squash that needed to be used and we ate divinely while hopping from other shows back over to the Super Bowl trying to espy the new commercials.  Was it just us or were they sadly lacking this year?

A note about the Carbonara.  I don't know if this is true everywhere but here in the Ozarks, Pasta Carbonara is on every Italian restaurant's menu but I've never seen a true carbonara. It's usually just fettuccine or spaghetti alfredo with some bacon thrown in.  True carbonara, like this recipe, has no cream or butter, eggs make the "sauce", and for that reason it's almost much healthier so I've included nutrition counts (and comparison alfredo counts) following the recipe.

How to describe our enjoyment of this dish. Let me see...How about like this?  I measured out my one cup of pasta and wanted more but made myself simply savor every bite.  Gene ate the rest.  I think I need to teach him how to make this!

Look For This: VitaTops

 
In my commitment for healthier, fresher eating, I've had to give up a lot of processed foods we take for granted, like cereals, granola bars, and other pre-packaged, pre-processed foods. Seriously, read the labels. I'm realizing there are a lot of edible products in the grocery store but not necessarily that much nutrition unless you stick to that sage piece of dieting advice to only grocery shop along the outer walls without venturing much into the aisles for boxed goods.

However, I have found one exception to that rule that I need to share with my fellow dieters and it's in the freezer section. At my Price Cutter, it's in the organice freezer section:  Vitalicious products.  Auntie Miranda and I didn't know you could even buy these in our local groceries for a while so our first introduction came by way of a splitting a mail order box.   The reason why you find them in the freezer section, and why online orders come with a packing slip that instructs you to freeze the muffins within a day or so, is because these muffins, muffin tops, brownies, etc don't have the normal laundry list of preservatives in them that most processed bars and treats do.  Each Vita Top is 100 calories, 4-5 grams protein, and 4-5 grams fiber made from whole wheat, nuts, and dried fruits (depending on the flavor, of course).  Since they're frozen, you can microwave them, toast them, or pop them into the toaster oven to warm up in just a couple of minutes.  Actually, because they only have a gram of fat, even if they're thawed to room temp, heating them up brings out their best side.  Not home-made but about as close as we're going to get inside a plastic wrapper.

At this point I'm addicted. I really love these nummies!  My personal favorites are the banana walnut, apple berry, and even though I'm not a big chocolate eater, I really like the deep chocolate flavor.  I'll be honest, I'm still committed to cooking from scratch including my own baking BUT these are a nice shortcut to have on hand that I can feel good about eating, knowing I'm sticking with my wholesome foods goal.  They're great to take to work, perfect for a quick breakfast, and a great choice for a late night snack attack that just will not go away. 

www.vitalicious.com