A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Did You Eat Your New Year's Day Black-eyed Peas? Cowboy Caviar

I love traditions and so for years I've tried to be a good little New Year's girl and eat my black-eyed peas but the truth is I don't really like 'em.  Until now. I finally found a recipe that I feel like enhances the taste so that I'm willing to down them not only on New Year's Day but on other days of the year as well.

The recipe is called Cowboy Caviar and there are a million variations. This is mine. I tailored the idea of a cold bean salad to accommodate my personal tastes and to incorporate some of my new eating principles.  There are beans, veggies, and olive oil, a trifecta of good for the body and a treat for the tastebuds.  I served this as a side dish on New Year's Eve but we also played around with it as a salsa-type appetizer eaten with tortilla chips, and I mixed some with some cooked brown rice I had in the fridge that I'll be taking in my lunch box at times this year as an entree and eating for lunch on New Year's Day today.  Yummy and versatile.

Creamy Cucumber Dip

 

So simple and yet so rewarding, this is a summer constant in my work lunchbox and snack around the house. Only three ingredients that pack an all-out taste power punch:  creamy for the tongue, crunch for the teeth, and salty herby for the psyche pleasure zone.

It's also one of my favorite orders at Parlor 88, a local pub with two locations in Springfield, where they also serve nummies like curried chicken salad lettuce wraps, jalapeno popper dip, and pulled pork nachos.

Parlor 88 serves the cucumber dip with lavosh (cracker bread) but at home we eat this primarily on good fibrous tough stuff crackers or I love it as a sandwich on wheat or rye bread. Middle-of-the-night Afternoon Tea, anyone?

An added pleasure is anytime the cukes come from your own garden. Sigh.  The best part of summer is the garden!

Caprese Salad with Pickled Green Tomatoes

 

Auntie Miranda went with friends to The Keeter Center in Branson for dinner the night before last night.  The Keeter Center is the small hotel and dining room run by the Hospitality Dept of School of the Ozarks.  And run very well.  We have a respiratory conference down there that's dynamite as a conference and The Keeter Center as a venue is superb.

In the dining room, Auntie chose this Caprese salad with fresh red and pickled green tomatoes.  She said she took one bite, rolled her eyes in delight, and said to the waiter "Can I get one of these to go?"  I went to bed early that night but it was waiting for me in the fridge when i got up the next day. 

Wow. I don't know how much better it could have been fresh because it was still incredibly fresh, crispy, and wonderful the next day.  This is definitely a do at home thing too. I know you can buy green tomato pickles, or even better would be to can them from the garden.  I'm thinking even fresh green tomatoes mixed with red tomatoes and fresh mozzarella would be wonderful fresh out of the garden....maybe drizzle a little honey across the top with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar to add that sweetness from the pickling syrup.

Thanks Aunti Miranda! What a lovely and healthy lunch. We'll definitely be working on a home recipe for this one!

Lunchbox Looky-loos

I think a lot of us have found that taking a lunch saves us from the perils of the cafeteria, both bad food and bad choices. Yesterday was a good proof of that for me.  For this last stretch of work, on the days I took my lunch to work I was able to get in my fruits and vegetables and eat good sources of protein while the one day, yesterday, I didn't pack a lunch and ended up with a ham sandwich. Not that that part was bad but a croissant? Why didn't my mouth say "wheat bread, please"?  Instead I said "mayo, yes please.". Grrrrr...  And then I had macaroni and cheese on top of it. Grrrr...

But on the other days I'm glad to say this is what I ate:

Chicken Finger wrap, bing cherries, sharp cheddar cheese, cucumber sticks, baby carrots.

The wrap looked like this:

Looks like fish sticks, doesn't it? It's chicken fingers. I didn't like using the ones with breading but I was in a hurry and I'd run out of breadless tenders. Next time I'll put the tomato and lettuce in separte baggie and put it together at work.  The tomatoes made it a little soggy but other than that it was good.  From bottom up, the layers are:  light cream cheese, Harry & David onion pepper chutney, lettuce, cherry tomatoes halved, and chicken fingers.

Small tuna, sharp cheddar, melba toast, raisins, zuchini sticks.

Lunchbox Goodness

This is the lunch (dinner) I would have eaten if I'd been able to work last night: 2 oz braunsweiger, 2 oz sharp cheddar (2% milk), 4 melba toasts, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, zucchini sticks, and raisins. I say "would" have because I'm off work a couple more days, have been since I came back from Vegas where I cracked my ankle and twisted my knee.  I tried to go in last night but just the walk in from the parking lot (okay, it is a LONG walk) had me nearly in tears and limping.  My knee isn't ready.  I won't whine anymore here.  Not because I'm not a whiner but because I've done so much of it on my personal blog, G's Spot.  If the cortizone shot doesn't kick in the next couple of days, I'll skip whining and go straight to stark raving lunatic rants.

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: From Julia Child to Arkansas

THIS is one of my favorite recipes in the whole world. I first ate it at Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in the 80's.  It's the same country inn I worked for owned by cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon. This was a fairly common and very beloved appetizer served at the Inn's six course Prix Fixe dinner.  It's called a crepe torte and is designate by how you build it, be it "garden", "Italian", or "Mediterranean" in Crescent's The Dairy Hollow House cookbook, available from DragonZ books. 

Now, I have a bit of a funny story to tell.  I had no idea until Sher of What Did You Eat?  and I were talking about it and she mentioned that it sounded familiar, that this recipe was originally created by Julia Child. With a little research into her Julia cookbooks, Sher found the recipe as Julia created it, after enlisting the help of her assistants, including a young Sara Moulton. The dish was specifically to be vegetarian and Julia was always very generous with giving her assistants credit with its creation. 

Now, how to phrase this correctly?  I'm not saying Crescent didn't give credit where credit was due most times, but I had a good laugh over this one. Not once do I remember it being mentioned the whole time I worked at DHH that this recipe came from Julia Child.  AND, no where in the DHH cookbook is it mentioned that this came from Julia Child, even though the recipe, down to the layers of carrots, mushrooms, and okay, green pea/zucchini instead of Julia's broccoli, are the same.  Unlike Julia, Crescent made hers in a cast iron skillet. That's the one difference I can find. 

It's not a huge thing, but it amuses me. I always thought that Crescent made this up all by her little lonesome.  Hmmm...come to find out the inspiration for this recipe was remarkably well put together...and by someone much more famous than Crescent.  Maybe I should be embarrassed that I don't know every one of Julia's recipes by heart but c'est la vie.  I admit it bothers me a bit that this was not openly acknowledged to be a Julia Child recipe when Julia herself very openly gave credit to her assistants for helping her creat it.  But hey, just one more disappointment in life to find out one of my heroes was made of clay.  The story of my life. :-)

On with the show.

The recipe, whether from Julia or Crescent is fabulous. Fab-oh-lust!  This recipe is sooo good that when I took it into work, one of the gals looked at it and thought it was pretty. Then I told her it was all vegetables and her comment was that she hates most vegetables. Then she tasted it. She loved it.  I happened to have a few extra servings because I'd wanted to share with a couple of foodies at work and she ended up eating one of them. A whole serving. I was so proud of her. That's a big compliment for someone who normally doesn't eat/like many vegetarian or vegetable dishes.  Personally, I think I could eat it every day and never get tired of it, for the taste, the prettiness, and because there are so many fresh vegetables in it that it's got to be good for you, vitamin-wise, even if there is quite a bit of cheese (meaning fat) in it.

I've made this three times in the last week. The first time was basically (as much as I can follow a recipe without my inner Glenna tweaking) Crescent's Italian version. That was wonderful and the version I took to work to share. The second version was an experiment lumping all the veggies and binding cream together inside a top and bottom crust made of egg roll wrappers just to see if it would work. It was okay, but just barely average. I'll never make it that way again. The third time was the winner.  I still used mostly Julia/Crescent's layers and the idea of how the whole thing together, but I left out a good part of the cheese, subbing light tofu, and subbed skim milk for the whole milk or cream of Crescent's version. The results were very good.  The final nutrition counts are a little higher in protein and a lot lower in fat. The protein is important to me, being chronically anemic. I know I've mentioned it before but not being a huge meat eater it's something I constantly must keep on top of so I don't have to go back on the icky iron pills.

Replete with basil, oregano, parsley, and garlic, this is my week's entry in Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted this week by Kate of Thyme for Cooking.  Check in next weekend for her roundup of herbed cooking!

Dr.'s Kitchen Monday: Heads Up--Vietnamese Cole Slaw

Dr's Kitchen today is going to be a heads up and a reprint of yesterday's recipe, reworked.  When I took my salad into work last night and showed it to my friend, Yung, who is actually Vietnamese, she said it was very similar to salad she's been making her whole life, with one exception. She crinkled her nose at the oil in the dressing. She said that she never uses any oil in the dressing, that the oil is "an American thing".  I think she's right. I don't think, in this, it would be missed at all.

So here is a reprint of the recipe, re-engineered a little for those of us on formal diets, and including the nutrition counts:

Lunch for Work: Nigella Lawson's Vietnamese Cole Slaw

Nigella's Red Seasonal Salad (her version of Vietnamese Cole Slaw) is packed up and ready to go with me when I leave for work at 2pm this afternoon.  I have to say the dressing smells so good I almost ate the dish for lunch instead of saving it for dinner. The dressing is so complex to the nose, while still being so light and fragrant that you want to dig in with a spoon.  The one huge thing I did change on this recipe, okay, two things, are that I had no red cabbage so I used green, and my stomach's been bothering me a bit lately so I traded down to a banana pepper instead of a chili. I just didn't think my stomach could handle any real heat.  Yum. Can't wait until dinner time to try this out.

My entry for Weekend Herb Blogging this  week, the salad is a traditional Asian mix of flavors including the herb cilantro, along with rice vinegar, lime, fish sauce, hot peppers, and garlic.  The event, created by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, is being hosted this week by Anna of Anna's Cool Finds.  Check out her blog later to see all of the herbalicious recipes from the week.

Recipe for Romance: Me, Gene, and Paul Newman

For all of us folks who’ve been married for a while and have forgotten how to do the romance dance, this is a very special recipe for evenings when you want to put the spark back in your relationship. Follow the directions to the letter to get results that will leave you smiling for days.