Fresh, Healthy Spinach and Mushroom Salad

Right before the 17 degree weather hit us here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-USA
I felt the urge to make a summery salad.  I know salads are not just for summer but
adding the blueberries, avocados and cherry tomatoes just gave it a summery feel.

 I simply used Spinach as the base of my salad rather than lettuce.
The other ingredients were mushrooms sliced thin and lots and lots of them!

I also added carrots for the crisp crunch factor. I sliced the carrots pretty thin as well and
the bright color makes it look appealing as well.  My brother is known for eating on nice
dinner plates almost every night because he says the food tastes even better
when it is plated nicely. It is quite true how they say a good portion of food is about
the way it looks, especially since we see with our eyes before eating it.
Then you have those people who literally smell every thing before eating
which I don't completely understand, but that's a whole another thing.

 

The fresh, plump blueberries were sweet and delicious to add to the salad.

 Cherry tomatoes are usually my... go-to for salads, I think because of the friendly bite-sized size.

 I also added little cubes of avocados and topped it with some steak that I flash fried
in the frying pan with just some salt & pepper for taste.

For the salad dressing, I simply mixed Olive Oil, Italian Seasonings
(the dried ones that literally say... Italian Seasonings) and a drop of white vinegar.
Very simple but easy and pretty tasty!
Now, that it's barely 20 degrees... I guess it's time for some soups maybe.

Pineapple Salsa Chicken Satays

Chicken Satays are one of my favorite apps...  apps- as in appetizers.

Even in the winter, when it's WAAY too cold brrrr to grill outdoors...
you can grill on your Foreman Grill- or you can always broil in the oven as well!
For the peanut sauce...  click on Chicken Satay Peanut Sauce.
Once you've got your sauce ready to go- you can cut your chicken into bite
size inches and skewer them on your (already soaked in water bamboo wooden sticks-
you want to soak them for at least 30 minutes so that the sticks don't
turn black and worse... burn.) Once the skewers are ready, carefully place them
on your Foreman Grill or lay them on a pan ready to broil in the oven.

 While your chicken satays are grilling away and getting their tan on- you can take s
ome pineapple chunks and give them a quick chop. As we know, pineapples have that
mixture of slight tartness with sweetness mixed together which is an awesome combination.
Add a sprinkle of fresh black pepper and it will give the pineapple a slight pepper spice KICK!
It's best if the pineapple is chilled in the refrigerator before spooning it onto the satays before eating.

Satays are great to eat as a snack, appetizer or as a meal with some rice or buttered pasta.
Meat on a stick- better yet, meat on a stick with good sauce topped with pineapple!
It's pretty good and that pineapple salsa is probably the easiest salsa EVER to make.

Alton Brown

Alton Brown...

Alton Brown's interest in cooking budded early with guidance from his mother
and grandmother. He admits that his culinary talents were used to get dates in college.
After college he spent many years working as a video director and cinematographer but,
he realized that most of his down time was spent watching cooking shows but they s
seemed to be on the dull side. He was convinced that he could do better- so he left the
film business and decided to study at the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont.

He blended his film knowledge and food knowledge together to
create the show "Good Eats", an entertaining food show that gives quite interesting facts,
thrown in with experience, wisdom, wit and history of the food, techniques and ingredients.
I always find it interesting to learn where food or anything for that matter came from
or how or why it was started. Alton has wrote several food reference books
that have won awards for all of them. Alton is the food historian and commentator
on Food Network's Iron Chef America as well as his show "Good Eats"
along with commercials like the one for Welch's Grape Juice.
Alton Brown was most recently recognized for winning the James Beard award
for TV Food Personality and Host for Good Eats. Alton lives in Georgia with
his wife and their daughter.

Alton Brown is a great cultivator because he is so into learning/teaching all
about the food not just- here's a recipe... do this and then when it's done, eat it.
It really helps to know different things about food so we can stay healthy and
learn what's good and not good. Here are a few Good Eats trivia facts that
have been on the show.

---- Cows that graze in pastures (grass) tend to produce cream-colored
milk whereas grain-fed cows produce a white milk.

---- Milk is good for putting out the fire in your tongue when you have eaten
something too spicy for you thanks to "casein".... casein being a protein found in
milk from mammals that cleanses our taste buds along in being used as a
binding agent as well... (it is typically found in tempera paint)

----More than 130 distinct chemical compounds have been identified
in TRUE vanilla extract... is that why it tastes so good and is so rich...?

----Cocoa butter and avocados are used to make many different cosmetic products.

---- Distilled water is usually boiled into steam and then condensed
back into liquid form and collected to make it truly pure.

Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake is overrated...

Red Velvet Cake is the one that has the dark reddish color.
It's associated with being a little more...  shall we say ga-ga fancy?
It's typically made with cream cheese icing/frosting.
Originally, the color of the batter changed to a red-brown color from
the reaction of the cocoa powder to the buttermilk, buttermilk having an acidic quality.
However, these days the reddish color just comes from red food coloring.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news if you didn't already know...
but red velvet cake batter is just chocolate cake batter with
red food coloring/dye in it. The ones with dye in it traditionally tend to
have a more moisture from the use of juice from boiling beets.
The deep red beet juice enhances the color but also helps retain the moisture as well.
Many gourmet eateries and bakeries are starting to make red-velvet pancakes.
hmmm a red pancake?

A Few HORRIBLE ones...

I would like to award these worst awards for these items for 2011.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bad mouth these establishments as a whole.
I'm just awarding worst awards to these specific items.

Michael's Deli in KOP has the worst cheese fries EVER!

Now, I feel I can judge these fries because I've had/tried these a hand full of times.
I've ordered than more than once because I figured it was just a bad day,
BUT the fries are always soggy hands down, always!  The cheese isn't so attractive either.
I'm not sure what I was thinking ordering these more than a few times- I guess
I was assuming you can't screw up fries unless you were having one bad day....?

Next is the salad from Kildare's Pub..... let me tell you, this salad was so bad,
I don't even remember which one it was. The lettuce was not only brown on a
few of the edges but there were actual pieces of lettuce that were completely
brown and spoiled. The vinaigrette dressing was also so tart that I seriously
couldn't eat the salad. Once again, I never knew a salad could be that SO bad.
Worst salad EVER!

The next award goes for worst Calamari..... given to Bahama Breeze.
I've had other food at Bahama Breeze and have enjoyed it very much but the calamari....

The calamari was on the soggy side and SO chewy it was like chewing
on leather, seriously! There are actually red bell peppers underneath the calamari
and they certainly didn't help the app in any shape or form!
(Don't let the picture fool you!)


The worst coffee EVER goes to Gloria Jeane's coffee at the Franklin Mills Mall.

Now, this is just a regular hot coffee....  you probably are asking... what are the brown
spotted spots! Excellent question! I couldn't tell you and neither could the girl and her sister
behind the counter. The coffee was barely luke warm also. It certainly didn't help that they
charged me incorrectly for the coffee and then on top of that they tried to charge me a
re-stocking fee!!! I'm not exaggerating. REALLY? re-stocking? What are you re-stocking?
If I remember correctly... they DID go out of business. Now, I'm giving them the worst
hot coffee award based strictly on the coffee alone and not the horrible customer service!

Knock, Knock... Who's There?

So I started composting food last year and I've had good days and weeks that went by
where I've neglected to recycle/compost.
I bought this metal tin container with a lid from Ikea for $12.
I simply started the compost with dirt
from 3 small plants that had died from neglect from my balcony.
I would add coffee grinds, vegetable peels, fruit skins and cores, egg shells,
OMGoodness there are probably over 300 egg shells in there.
(roughly guessing of course) Every once in a while I would take my little garden shovel
or a plastic fork and mix the soil around.  In the summer I have it sitting on my balcony...
and once the Fall season rolled around- I brought it inside and have it in the corner
of the kitchen. It doesn't smell and because there is a lid- it doesn't attract bugs
which is great of course!  Now, who wants to see what it looks like inside?

Knock, Knock........................................  who's there?

Notice how you can't even tell that there were regular size carrots peels,
full cracked egg shells, banana peels, orange peels, peanut shells,
hmmm what else was thrown in there.... onions skins, leaves from other dead
plant leaves and much more...
The picture doesn't really do it justice... The soil IS really dark and healthy,
ridiculous with nutrients for when I grow my indoor, window side-
herbs and veggies! There is nothing better than fresh basil, thyme and rosemary!

RAINBOW cake it up!

So, I've had the great opportunity of making this crazy yet awesome cake 5 times now in the
past 3 months. It's called Rainbow Cake for the simple reason of being a 6 layered cake with
colors of the rainbow. I'm not too much of a baker but there are a few cakes I really enjoy
to make but more importantly...EAT!
Flourless Decaf Espresso Chocolate Cake being one and the second new favorite is the Pumpple.

Making this cake takes a teeny bit longer than the normal cake but it's SO worth it. After your white/vanilla cake batter is ready... (2 boxes) you want to split your batter into 6 even amounts.

Here is one, and then here are 4.... (you want a total of 6)

Then you add drops of food coloring for each color of the rainbow.  (ROYGBIV)
You want to start with the bottom layer first. Purple being the bottom layer of the cake.

For some reason- purple always looks grayish before it is baked.
Then you want to follow with the blue- followed by green, yellow, orange and then- lastly, red.

Then you take your cake pan (the pans with the sides that get unleashed work best)

I cook 2 at a time- simply because I own 2 pans.
If you have more than 2 pans- try it all at once... be a rebel!
Once each layer is baked (you can stick a toothpick in the center and see if it comes out clean)
I take the sides of the pan out and throw each layer in the refrigerator.
As I start the 2nd batch of the next 2 colors- and clear the counter area a little bit-
it's already time to take the first ones out from the refrigerator.
(as they are chilled it becomes way more convenient to take off the bottom of the pan.
I start with carefully centering the purple layer on the middle of the plate.
Then I add a little icing followed by the blue layer, than more icing etc... for all 6 layers.

It's always a "wow", "oooo" "let me take a pic" moment when you cut into this cake!
I think I might try to alternate red and green for the next one....