Don't remember where I found this photo but how cool is this?! This is actually a cake of a pot of crawfish, corn on the cob, and potatoes. Seeing as how we just got back from New Orleans and eating the real thing, I thought I'd share this beauty with ya.
Now that we're back from our trip, I'll be adding some new recipes soon!
Spring is a great time for macaroons. Their lightness, sweetness, and coconut shreds just feel so much like spring. These little treasures are actually easy and quick to make, and here I have dipped half of each in melted chocolate for extra yumminess!
Ingredients
14 oz. bag of shredded coconut
2/3 cup granulated sugar
6 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
4 egg whites
1 tsp almond extract
1 box semi-sweet baking chocolate
How to Make Chocolate-Covered Macaroons:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix together the coconut, sugar, flour, and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Add in the egg whites and almond extract and stir until blended.
Drop by rounded spoonsful onto a baking sheet that is coated in non-stick cooking spray or has a Silpat mat lining it. Bake for about 30 minutes, until they start to lightly brown. Remove from oven and cool completely.
Melt the baking chocolate in a microwave in 30-second intervals until completely melted, stirring between each interval. Dip half of each macaroon into the chocolate and allow to harden on a sheet of wax paper. Allow to harden in the fridge. I just put my dipped macaroons back on the Silpat-lined baking sheet to harden in the fridge.
If you happen to have any leftover (good luck with that!), store in a covered container for up to a week.
I do have a wooden cookbook holder similar to the one above. But for loose recipes or cookbooks with removeable binder pages, I came up with this idea which makes it super easy to follow along with a recipe:
If you have a magnetic stove hood like I do, you can simply hang up your recipe using a magnet. Of course, take it down if you're using the stove so you don't start a fire! I left mine up while cooking pancakes because I'm crazy like that - living on the edge of danger.
Hanging around like my recipes,
Spring is finally here! We have had such a cold, cold winter this year! I am thrilled that the warm, sunshiny days have finally found us. Where I grew up (in New Orleans) it is strawberry season. In fact, the famous Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival is held in April. Up here in Tennessee, strawberry season is still a bit off.
So if you have access to strawberries now, you must try this moist, delicious, sweet bread. If not, hold on to this recipe and come back to it when you have strawberries!
Strawberry Bread
(click here for printable version)
How to make Strawberry Bread:
Serves 8. Recipe from Martha Stewart.
The new RDA guidelines recommend a full 2 cups of fruit each day for optimum health (as well as 2 1/2 cups of veggies). How in the world can we incorporate that much fruit into our days? I have two ideas:
Fruit Salad - Take lots of fruit that is currently in season, chop it up, and mix it all together for fruit salad. This can be a healthy dessert after dinner, a snack, or a side dish with lunch. I add vanilla yogurt to mine for extra smoothness, flavor, and health benefits. Serve it in ice cream cones for extra fun & kid appeal. Make a big batch each week and serve some every day!
Smoothies - We have smoothies for a snack several times a week. Every day would be an easy way to incorporate lots of fruit each day! I usually just put milk and/or yogurt as a base, then add a splash of orange juice, a banana, and some mixed frozen berries. Sometimes I add peanut butter or protein powder, which then makes it a good breakfast as well. You can find tons of smoothie recipes out there!
Going Fruity,
About a month ago, the new RDA guidelines said that we should be eating 2 1/2 cups of veggies each day, as well as 2 cups of fruit for optimum health.
The scary thing is that, as a friend of mine responded, "I'm not sure if I eat that in an entire month." And the sad thing is that the produce section of the grocery store can be the most expensive! They apparently did some research before putting the recommendation out there, and calculated that this would cost $2.50 per day. While at first this sounds reasonable, that is per person. So for my family of four, the recommendation of produce alone would cost $300 a month! Yikes!
Right there is a great reason to join me in growing veggies in the backyard this year! Other than that, I can't help you with the financial aspect, but there are couponing sites and such out there that may be of help. I can say that if you shop for produce that is in season and local, such as at farmers markets, then that will be much more economical. Oh, and there are lots of ways to reduce produce waste - that will save a lot right there! For example, buy a bunch of onions and green peppers and when you get home, wash & chop them, then freeze portions in ziplock baggies. They can then be used any time to add in to omelets, hash browns, soups, meatloaf, and lots more recipes, and they won't get rotten sitting in your fridge!
Anyhoo, what I can help with is how in the world to eat lots of fruits & veggies every day! The new recommendation shook me out of complacency and made me realize that we can do much, much better. One idea that I implemented right away, because it is a cinch, is:
Lunch every day is salad as a base. Don't cringe! There is so much you can do with a salad to make it yummy! I plan to make a different salad each weekday so that it doesn't get boring. Here are three ideas that we do already:
{Yikes! Not many veggies in the fridge this day!}
Salad Bar - The kids are more likely to eat a salad when they can get to pick & choose and put it together themselves! The only thing is that you may have to require a certain number of veggies or colors, or they may end up with lettuce, cheese, and ranch!
Texas Salad - I totally made up this name. But I think it fits. In one of my low-carb cookbooks I found this incredibly delicious salad idea - lettuce and lots of veggies, hard-boiled eggs sliced and places on the side, BBQ pulled pork on top and crumbled bacon on top. Then you add a tiny bit more BBQ sauce and some ranch. This isn't so healthy so we do it occasionally but we also sometimes do chicken rather than pork and leave out the bacon.
{Photo: Stock Xchng}
Popcorn Shrimp Salad- For variety, add pre-made or homemade popcorn shrimp to a veggie salad. You get extra crunch, flavor, and protein!
By the way, to lettuce you can add: carrots, celery, mushrooms, bell peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, red onion, cheese, croutons or chinese noodles, eggs, meats, tuna salad, salmon salad, seafoods, fake crab meat, sprouts, water chestnuts, those little baby corns, olives, artichoke hearts, asparagus.
An added benefit? If you're eating a salad every day, those veggies won't get spoiled sitting in your fridge!
One note about kids and veggies: if your child still refuses to eat the salad, I err on the side of coercion. I believe that as parents we are responsible for protecting our kids and for keeping them healthy. We sometimes must enforce decisions for them because they simply don't know better. It doesn't have to be a battle though!
With my now 6-year-old, I matter-of-factly served salad with dinner every day and said simply that he must eat it before he leaves the table. He whined for a couple of days but very quickly realized that I was serious and then just starting eating salad every day like its any other food! I know some people may balk at me for this, but there is a difference between battling over food and simply making a loving requirement. I told him his body needs green veggies to grow big and strong and that I love him and want him to be healthy, so he has to eat his salad. End of story.
We did the same thing when we started putting broccoli on pizzas. Now all three kids prefer pizza loaded with veggies. Okay, they would totally choose meat-lovers if given the option, but they truly say that our homemade veggie pizzas are better than commercial cheese or pepperoni pizza! =)
Enjoying Our Salad Days,
I love sandwiches, but I get tired of pb & j and I try to make luncheon meat be a rare occasion. I spent about ten years of my life as a vegetarian, so I know that veggie sandwiches can be bland and dry. But not this one, baby. This sandwich is ooey gooey deliciousness.
It is a veggie sandwich, and if your kids don't usually go for that sort of thing, this may be the sandwich to change that. My kids would all balk at everything I put on these sandwiches (except the cheese!), but when I put it all together and broil it to gooeyness on toasty bread, they gobble it up.
You'll need: a pack of cherry tomatoes - cut into halves, a bunch of parsley - chopped, a can of black or kalamata olives, a can of artichokes, a lemon, garlic - minced, olive oil, a crusty loaf of bread (ciabatta is great), and some kind of flavored cheese (Like garden cheese with veg bits in it, or mediterranean cheese with olives & red pepper in it, something like that. You can use plain but only if you absolutely must - the cheese really pulls it all together.)
First cut the bread into however many sandwiches you need, and cut each piece in half. Put these, open-faced, on a baking sheet. Spread the olives over the bottom halves of the bread.
In a pan on medium-low heat, saute the artichokes, chopped up parsley (put however much you want, or the whole bunch), and two minced garlic cloves in about two tablespoons of olive oil. Saute until the parsley is just limp and the garlic is getting translucent. Squirt some lemon juice (about a tablespoon) in and mix. Spread this mixture over the olives on the bread.
Saute the cherry tomatoes in the same pan until they soften up a bit, then add them to the bread as well. Salt and pepper the whole thing.
Lay slices of the cheese on top of everything, and stick the baking sheet into the oven. Set to broil and do not walk away even for a second! It will only take a few minutes - keep checking, and take it out when the bread is toasty and the cheese is melty:
Notes: I find the garden cheese at my local health food store, and the mediterranean cheese at Kroger. Both are delicious. See what you can find. For the artichokes, pour them out into a bowl and finger through them, removing any tough outer leaves and discarding. I make four large sandwiches with these ingredients.
Enjoy!
I don't know about you, but when I was growing up, vegetables with dinner meant canned corn, peas, or green beans heated up on the stove with a big pat of butter melted in. The end.
So as an adult, I have had such a hate-hate relationship with dinner vegetables. Frankly I find canned veggies with butter unappealing. But all of the "side dish" recipes I find in cookbooks seem to take nearly as much time and effort to make as the meal itself! Not for this busy mama.
In case you're in the same dilemma, I thought I'd share some of the veggie side dish creations I have found or come up with that are delicious, fairly easy & quick, and, well, side-dishy. Enter the bacon tarragon red potatoes. Five little ole ingredients plus the red potatoes. Boil the potatoes, cook & crumble the bacon, throw it all together and you're good to go.
Get together 1/4 cup chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon chopped green onion, 2 slices of bacon - cooked & crumbled, and 3 tablespoons of butter. Of course you'll need a handful of red potatoes. I used 4 good-sized ones.
Boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, just until they are soft enough to stab a fork into. Let cool and cut them into wedge-like chunks.
There you have it. Bacon. Butter. Parsley. Tarragon. Green onions. So delicious. My fave potatoes as a child were those buttery parleyed new potatoes they served at school. I like to think of this recipe as the grown-up version of those. Or the "gourmet" version of those. Hmm.
Notes: As you can see in the photo, my recipe made a very small amount of the side dish, which was fine because it was just for me and the kids for lunch. But you may want to double or even triple for a hearty dinner side dish!
One potato, two potato, three potato, score!
