What I want to eat right now

Breakfast
French omelet and fruit or hot cereals or toast with nutella or melon wrapped in ham coffee

Am snacks apples with nut butter, coffee

Lunch.
Broth or miso
Deconstructed lunch plate
Laughing cow cheese, heirloom tomato with oil and salt, olives, hunk of good bread, salmon
Iced chai

Tea
Green tea, baby carrots, sliced cucumbers, red bells and hummus

Dinner
Hearty soups like potato leek soup, beef stew, spicy veggie, lemon tea
Salads

Casual platter dinners.
Deconstructed roasted veggies. Roast meats

Holiday party
cream cheese salmon soup
pozole
Beef stew
Squash soup
good bread. Variety of wine champagne


family gathering deconstructed meal
cocktails/ champagne
salad bar/ soup bar
3 good breads
Make your own cheese cake minis

Where to find food?

My favorite place to shop for food hands down is the Aptos Farmers Market. This happens every Saturday at Cabrillo College. It is year round and fantastic. Of course unlike the florescent lit piles of produce in your local mega mart you cannot find all items all year. Farmers markets are so fantastic because you get what is in season now. This means that the flavor of food is at its peak. I once had a hankering for apples. It was not the right season and so I could not find them at my local farmers market. I made my way to Safeway and bought a bag. When I got home and took a bite of one, I was so incredibly sad. Compared to the flavor of the ones I was used to at the farmers market, it tasted like cardboard. Because I like to eat I prefer things that taste good and so that is one of the reasons I love my farmers market.

Another is money. These days money is on everyone’s mind. There are two very important financial reasons to shop at a famers market. The first is my pocket book. I like many Americans prefer to buy organic food. We are waking up to how important our health really is. (Tangent statistics: this generation of children will have a shorter lifespan then their parents due to obesity! One dollar spent in prevention will save you 10 dollars in cure) one thing I hear over and over again is that people want to eat better, they want to eat organic food but they think it is too expensive. I think this is because they go to the big box supermarkets and compare organic to non organic. However what costs me 25 dollars at my farmers market cost me 75 at Safeway. Pretty amazing! What’s more is that I get all the vegetables I need for my family of two, for a week, breakfast lunch and dinner, for 25 dollars! I should also let you know we are not little eaters. We love our salads piled high with all sorts of vegetables and we eat them twice a day. So in short I save money when I shop at my farmers market.

The second financial reason is that of the farmers. I appreciate that there are still people out there working to feed not only their own family but their whole country. When I buy the pound of potatoes at any supermarket only about 3 nickels of my dollar get back to the farmer. 15 cents! The rest goes to the chain of getting the food ready and shipped to my store. This is really unacceptable. We should value the hard working folk of our nation much more then 15 cents on the dollar!


Book to read: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver

Of course not everyone lives in such a place with farmers markets though I think they are becoming more prevalent. What’s more some parts of the country have real seasons unlike the California coast. I would next turn to a local natural food store and then the organics at a supermarket. I know I mention Safeway above and it is not to pick on them I am happy that they have started to carry their organic brand. I would scout out your local area and find where you can get good fresh organic food that is local. Contemplate how many people your food had to go through before it comes to you and make the best choice you can.

Picky eaters

Picky eaters. We have all come across them and I hear this as a common complaint among my fellow cooks. I have come across several types of picky eaters. Two of my best friends are vegetarians and I myself was one for about 13 years. Of course as best friends do we often eat together so that needs to be taken into account weather dinning in or dinning out. I think because I was a vegetarian for so long this doesn’t faze me as much as other eating restrictions. Of course living in this area makes it a lot easier to find vegetarian fair. However I have found over my many years of not eating meat as well as eating and cooking with my best friends that there are always loads of option out there. I was able to find food in a steak house in Texas. I think most people with special diets like that, know how to find the foods they need in just about any situation. As far as feeding others I find that even those of us who eat meat can still appreciate a meatless meal. In our house we are enacting Meatless Mondays.

Fave veggie entre

Poblano peppers halved and cleaned

Roast in a hot oven until they start to look softish

Cook quinoa and mix with a can of black beans (or homemade black beans) you want a 2-1 rations of quinoa to beans

Mix in some salsa in or a can of chopped green chillies

Fill cooled poblano halves with quinoa mixture and top with a slice or so of cheese. Use Oaxaca or Monterey Jack.

Bake at 350 till done.

Serve with a big salad and a steamed veggie. Super healthy super quick and even meat-lovers will like this meal.

There are also people who have allergies which are very important. Many people have sever allergic reactions and so if you are cooking for other people you need to make sure you know about any allergies. This again is something that is fair and any good hostess / host will check with her/ his guest when inviting them for a meal.

The last group is the people that don’t like certain foods or worse yet are sure they won’t like it so they won’t try it. This is what we typically call a picky eater. I have several thoughts on this.

My first is that parents should stop being short order cooks. Teach your kids to appreciate the food they have on their plate. My mother is a great cook. She made dinner for us every night and served it to us as a family. (tangent here) family dinner takes 1 hour tops and is very important family bonding time. Check in, find out how days were and who the people around the table are. Yes we have busy lives and yes we have tones of schedule but we have an hour and if you don’t take that time your going to wake up one day and not know who your kids friends are what they do or what is going on with your spouse or if you’re a kid your going to think mom and dad don’t think spending time with you is important! How awful is that! Ok stop rant.

So my mother cooked for all of us and there was as the saying goes two choices for dinner. Eat it or don’t. Even the things we didn’t like (and I hate Brussels sprouts) we had to eat at least one of. I think this helped my brother and I learn to try new things not just in food but in life too.

I once talked to a friend of mine who was newly married to a past housemate of mine and she said “he is so picky! How did you get him to eat?” Easy I cooked it he ate it. Back to the two options eat it or don’t. If you have a complainer at the dinner table the best cure is to teach them to cook. They get one night a week to make a meal for the family and they can make the foods they like. Supervised by someone who can cook of course. For that matter it is great for every person to make a meal once a week. It teaches you so much!

Easy blueberry dessert

Next time I would make the crust as a crumble top but it was good and took about half an hour and was super easy

I poured frozen blueberries in a bowl and defrosted them in the microwave. Added cinnamon, about a cup of sugar and a ¼ cup of brown sugar, a tablespoon of flour and a teaspoon or so of vanilla and mixed it all in a bowl. For the crust I took a box of old cookies that were kind of stale (we had shortbread Girl Scout cookies) and smashed them up. I added melted butter and pressed the mixture into a cake pan. I poured the blueberry mixture into the crust. I took 2 pats of butter cut into 4ths and placed it around the top of the blueberry mixture. Baked for 20 min at 350 and it was quite tasty. Serve with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

as you can see it was well received :)

fried chicken dinner

When life gets too much I can always count on food. Not in the eating because of emotional emptiness way, but in cooking. When I was in high school, and I had a rough week, I used to wake up Saturday morning and go down stairs to the kitchen. Here I would stay all day cooking dishes and forgetting myself. I love that cooking is predictable and instant gratification. If you know the basics you can create numerous meals. I still love how the smells and the sounds and the way food bring people together. Now when I feel like I need a little perk up I call some friends and cook up a good meal that everyone can enjoy. It is important to put thought into several things so that your recipe for a dinner party is a success. For starters you have to decide what kind of dinner party this is going to be. Next decide how many people you are going to cook for. And lastly what to cook. The last dinner party I threw was a small casual dinner for 6. Since it was a week night I knew that I wanted to keep it simple and casual. In honor of my boyfriend’s friend (who is currently serving in the Army and is home in between tours in the mid east) I choose to make a comfort meal. I made friend chicken, buttermilk biscuits and cream gravy. One of my girl friends brought a beautiful salad and another brought a lovely pie with ice cream. Which brings up another point. As much as I love to cook I am not a hostess in the old fashioned sense. I grew up in a house where my mom feed everyone! My brother and I would bring friends home for dinner all the time. Our family of four often had at least twice that many people at the dinner table. For this reason the first time people come to my house they are shown where the glasses, utensils, and dishes are. They are expected to take initiative and help themselves. So back to the dinner. I follow my moms theory and usually people that come to dinner bring something in a potluck like fashion. I find that classics like fried chicken go over really well with a crowd but are often very intimidating to people. I think this is because people get very emotionally dug into the “right” way to cook this or that. I understand that recipes can be emotional and sentimental but I say try things and make them work for you. That said when I make fried chicken I really like to use the breast tenders. I get them in a huge bag at Costco frozen and use them for all kinds of meals.
Fried Chicken
Soak chicken tenders in buttermilk with some meat season spice for a couple hours. You can put all the thawed chicken tenders in a bowl, pour the buttermilk over it. Shake some spice on it stir to combine and put a cover on the bowl and stick it in the fridge in the morning and when you get home in the evening it will be ready to go. Next get your station ready. I use a pie pan and put in flour, salt and pepper and stir. Next to the pan you will cook them in on the stove. On the other side of that I put a plate with paper towels to absorb the excess grease. Of course you will also need a pair of tongs. At this point I also mix together my ingredients for my buttermilk biscuits. Melt Crisco in you pan. I use a cast iron skillet. Once the Crisco is completely melted you can start the frying process. Take a chicken tender or two out of the bowl let the buttermilk drip off for a second. Dip into pie pan with flour, flip, make sure they are coated with flour. Then lay gently into the skillet. Because they are chicken tenders they will only take a few min on each side. Check the bottom of the tender to make sure you have a nice golden crust on the bottom before you turn them over in the pan with your tongs. When the tenders are done take them out and lay them on the plate with paper towels. Until you get the feel of it make sure you cut open the first one to make sure it is done.
Buttermilk Biscuits
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon backing soda
1/3 heaping Cup Crisco
¾ C buttermilk
Mix flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Rub with Crisco until it is like corn meal. mix in butter milk until one ball
On a floured surface knead dough till no longer sticky, roll out and form into biscuits. Cook 8 min (6 min if freezing)
Cream Gravy
Melt Crisco in a pan. Add in equal portion of flour. Stir together and toast making a roux. Add in crumbled sausage. Once sausage is done pour in whole milk and then cook down till it is nice and thick.

Helpful Cooking Tips

Like many people I learned to cook from my mom and my grandmother and my aunts. I also learned things for the internet and the food network and from lots of my friends who are also great cooks. Here are a few I find helpful no matter what you are cooking, because I have found that food taste better when your not stressed out.

1. Make menus. I do this two ways if it is a special meal I take a page of paper and fold it in half length wise. On the left hand side I write the dishes I will make. Then I read through the dishes and on the right hand side write the ingredients I will need to buy so I have a shopping list. I also use this for weekly menus and just list all the days of the week on the left hand side. I further split that up for breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner for each day. This keeps me organized and I can take half an hour to plan my meals each week and shopping takes hardly any time. For crazy weeks where I use a menu mailer from savingdinner.com
2. Prep on shopping day. When you get home from the store wash your veggies and I also take some time to chop up things to have them handy for snacks and quick meals. It is like having a salad bar in your fridge.
3. Be your own prep chef. Before you start to cook the meal get everything chopped up to the size you want and pulled out of the fridge and pantry. That way no last min panic trying to find something.
4. Have a trash bowl or two. Thanks Rachel Ray! I keep one for compost and one for actual trash
5. Clean while you cook. Ok so I have not mastered this yet but hey I’m getting better. I like to have a large bowl of hot soapy water in my sink (I don’t have a double basin) so when I’m cooking I can put the dirty dishes right into the wash bowl making clean up much easier.
6. Spice it up. using herbs (the leaf part of a plant) and spices (the other parts of a plant) are great for cooking. I use to confuse myself on which ones I had already used until I read in I think a romance novel of all places the tip to march your spices across the counter. the ones you have not used on one side of your mixing bowl or dish and the ones you have used on the other side.
   

Feel better chicken soup

I'm not going to claim this will cure you but I will say that when I am sick it has helped me feel better and it seems to do the same for other people. And is a fairly simple dish to make. A good basic with many variations and of course easy to adjust once you have the basic soup down. Though I will say it turns out to be more like a stew. It also makes a ton so you should have it for a week or so depending on how many people eat it.

Take a whole chicken that has been cut into pieces and put it in a stock pot. Cover it with water and simmer until the meat falls off the bone. This can be an hour or two. Take chicken out of water and remove meat from bones. Chop or shred the larger pieces in the more bite size. Put meat aside for a moment. Let the broth continue to simmer.

While the chicken was simmering in a pan on the stove sauté one white onion that has been chopped into smallish pieces ( you can use yellow but I always cook with white. It is a Mexican thing) and several cloves of garlic or a tablespoon from the jar of chopped garlic, which is what I do. Once they start to get soft add some salt and pepper, dried red chili flakes, dried thyme, dried oregano, and some meat or poultry marinade. I use Phipps Country Meat Marinade and it has: Lemon pepper, salt, Garlic, paprika, onion, pepper, oregano, thyme, rosemary and baby leaf. Stir in. then add Chopped carrot and celery. Sauté until the herbs are well mixed in then add mixture to your chicken broth. Add Chicken back in too. Add noodles. When noodles are cooked soup is done.

Some variations to get you started:

If you have an upset tuummy omit the noodles and serve over short grian rice.

Add Green cabbage or other hard vegies with the carrots and celery.

For a more Asian style add 5 spice powder and shitake mushrooms and chow main or undo noodles and add chopped fresh ginger when sautéing the onions and garlic.

Add green beans just at the end

Add lemon zest right at the end. Or on top of the bowl you are serving.