Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the tastiest of them all..!?!

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the tastiest of them all..

Have you ever wanted to try a taste test to truly see either
which brand or type is better OR to see what your palate
is telling you?  Believe it or not- a large portion of our eating
is done with our other senses.  Our scent as we tend to smell
the food and of course visually with our eyes.
Not always, but more often than not- our palate tells
us something that we might of thought differently.

In our household- we make it a fun mini event by choosing an item
and then getting several of them made by popular brands.

This time around it happened to be dark chocolate.
The brands chosen were:
Hershey, Ghiradelli, Lindt, Godiva, Dove and a random gourmet brand.

2 were waaaay too sweet, 1 was hard to finish... chocolate=hard to finish?
What planet are we on right?   2 were just shy from winning 1st place.
There was a clear winner that was rich, creamy, intense but not
overwhelming intense and just... really good.

hmmm.  are you wondering who won!?
You should take my taste testing class coming up and you'll be able
to taste test over a dozen different things to see which brand is
better according to your taste buds!  cheeses, beverages, yogurts,
different brands of many different things.

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which will your palate choose, Let's Cultivate Food

We're ROOTING for you!

cut 2 inches,  place in 1 inch of water,  1 week to soil

Let's Cultivate Food is 'ROOTING' for you!
Did you know that you can take any vegetable and chop 
the root end portion - 2-3 inches of it, 
soak the cut portion in a bowl or container of water 
and it will start to grow again..?  
Typically you will see some new growth as early as 4-5 days. 
(some veggies will take a tad bit longer)  
If you have outdoor space or a pot with soil indoors... 
you can move your new veggie plant within 7-10 days.   
'Lettuce Turnip the Beet!' ...........Oh KALE yeah!  

Bacon wrapped beef lemongrass lollipops!

What's that movie where they say that things are always better on a stick?
I certainly agree but let's use something that will give us a little flavor
rather than a wooden stick. Lemongrass in this case.
I tend to joke and say that lemongrass is organic fruit loops
during my cooking classes. If you've never had anything with lemongrass-
you don't know what you're missing!

For these bacon wrapped beef lemongrass lollipops- you will need:

lemongrass stalks (usually comes 3 to a bunch) you can cut each stalk  to about 

3 inches getting 3 to a stalk.  So approximately 9 lollipops for  3 stalks.  

For the beef, I used flank steak (about 1 pound) and sliced it into thin slices.

I then marinaded the flank beef slices in:

5 TBSP of soy sauce

1 heaping TBSP of hot pepper paste

1 teaspoon of a sugar (or your choice of sweetener) 

(a grated apple or pear is good too!)

2 TBSP of sesame oil

mix with the flank steak and let it sit for a minimum of 20 minutes.

Then you want to make a sweet chili glaze.

~ 3 heaping TBSP of apricot jelly

~ 1 teaspoon of hot pepper seeds ( to your liking of spiciness)

~ juice of an orange

~ 1 TBSP of rice vinegar

Turn your oven on now to 400 degrees.

Time to wrap or roll.  Whatever you want to call it is  okay!

Take your slices of beef and wrap around the top half of the lemongrass  'stick'

(about 2 -3 slices of flank steak slices per lollipop)

Then wrap a piece of bacon (thinly cut preferred) around the beef.

Let it bake in the center of your oven for about 15 minutes.

You will see the bacon turn more brown.

After 15 minutes, turn your oven to broil, 

take the sweet chili glaze and brush it on the bacon portion.

Move your pan or sheet (whatever you laid your lollipops on)

to the top shelf right under the broiler.

You want to prop the oven door open at this time...  

you know so the room temperature

air flows through for circulation and doesn't dry out the food. 

Once the bacon browns and almost gets a slight char- they are done.

about 7 minutes after you place it on broil.

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Just ROLL with it!   Let's Cultivate Food

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