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Everyday Food: Kicked Up A Notch!

Have you seen the latest issue of Everyday Food magazine?  Here is a picture of it, with Martha and Emeril on the cover.  Emeril will now be doing a regular feature for the magazine, called, what else, “Kick It Up!”

This issue is all about grilling and other summer cooking.  What’s really nice is that you can get a lot of the recipes on the website, on the Table of Contents page for the current issue.  Here is the Table of Contents for the July/August issue.

Most of the names of the recipes are clickable, and these are available for free download.  The ones that aren’t…sorry, you will just have to buy the magazine!

You should first try the recipes online…and if you like them, you will probably want to subscribe to this magazine.  This is a magazine designed for regular people…no fancy, hard-to-find ingredients, and most recipes are quick and easy to prepare.

There is also an Everyday Food TV show on PBS…check your local listings to see if it airs in your area.  And new this year is a spinoff of the Everyday Food show, called Everyday Baking.  Check ‘em out!

Get Inspired: Taco Salad

I LOVE taco salad, and this is an easy and very tasty one to make at home. Click on the image above for a large printable copy of the recipe, this will open in a new window.

A few tips here - 90% lean ground beef is kind of pricey. You can buy cheaper ground beef and use that instead. Use a little more than a pound, maybe a pound and a half. After browning the beef for 5 minutes (as in Step 2), drain the beef in a colander to get rid of any excess fat. Return beef to the pan and proceed with recipe. This is important, as you don’t want your salad to be swimming in fat.

Cilantro - either you love it or you hate it. If you don’t like it, you’ll find that it has kind of a “soapy” taste. Use flat-leaf parsley instead.

Finally, you should definitely use the suggested garnishes - avocado (or guacamole), red onion, cheese, and sour cream.

And there you have it!  An easy, quick and very tasty summer meal, courtesy of our friends at Shaw’s and America’s Test Kitchen!   Enjoy!

C is for COOKIE!

Today I have a recipe for you that will make you need to dust off those ellipticals and get into some serious working out…the Infamous Triple Chocolate Cookies!

I actually already have this online, so rather than re-typing or copy/pasting, I will just link to it.  GO HERE FOR YUMMIE COOKIE RECIPE!  It’s in printable form (I hope…LOL!).

It’s from America’s Test Kitchen, the PBS show put out by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.  I promise that everyone who tries these cookies will love them.  I have brought these to parties.  I gave extra to Mike to take to work.  I have even mailed these to people as far away as England.  They mail really well, as they stay moist for longer than other cookies do.  You just need to wrap them well.

To wrap for mailing:  get one of those GladWare containers from the grocery store.  They are as good as Tupperware, reusable, but much cheaper, so you don’t have to worry about getting the container back.

Line it with waxed paper, then put in a layer of cookies (after they have cooled completely).  Top with another sheet of wax paper, then more cookies, more wax paper.  When the container is full, put a final sheet of wax paper over it, then the lid.  Wrap the whole shebang in a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil, then pack in a shipping box with sufficient padding (newspaper, packing peanuts, whatever).

You could also pack them in a decorative tin, the same way.  Wrapping the foil over it helps keep the lid from popping off in transit, and keeps freshness in.

The picture here is a scrapbook page I made for a recipe page swap a long time ago.  It’s all digital but for the “C is for Cookie” title.

Enjoy!

Lidia’s Family Table

This is one of the books that I want to get.  The PBS show of the same name is currently airing on CreateTV, and I really want to make a lot of the recipes in it.  But they are not all available on Lidia’s website, so I need to buy the book if I want them.

If I buy directly from PBS, it costs the full list of $35.00.  But at Buy.com, it’s only $22.63, with free shipping if I order more than $25.  I’m sure I can find something else I want from there, I always do.  So Buy.com wins.

Anyhoo, if you get CreateTV where you are, check out this show.  Lidia is a great cook, a great teacher.  The “set” is not a set, it’s her own personal home kitchen.  Oh, woudl I kill to have a kitchen like that.  And often her family members join her on the show…daughter Tanya, son Joe (who is also a partner with Mario Batali in a restaurant venture), her mother, and various grandkids.

Lidia has had several cooking shows on PBS over the years.  She is one of the longest-running cooking show hosts on TV; I think only Mary Ann Esposito has been on longer.

Oh, and I see that Buy.com has her new book, at a greatly discounted price, as well.  Gotta add that to my shopping cart.  Now I get two great books for not much more than I would have paid elsewhere for one.  And I will get my free shipping, too!

Mangia!

Childhood obesity

Most of my exposure to kids is at the minor league ball games that we go to. I keep seeing news stories about the childhood obesity epidemic, and from what I see in person, it’s so very true.

Yesterday, we were at a New Hampshire Fisher Cats game, and there was this really fat kid sitting not too far from us. Parents nowhere in sight, and it was hard to tell how old he was, because he was so big. I’m guessing about pre-teen aged.

But I could see why he was so fat. Every five minutes, it seemed, he was getting up and coming back with yet more food, scarfing it down, and then going back for more.

I know that the appetites of teen and pre-teen boys are legendary. But a lot of them AREN’T so obese. Makes me wonder what this kid eats the rest of the time. So many parents are too lazy to cook, so they just go to the drive through of the local fast food burger joint. I know of people who do this EVERY DAY. Then they whine about how their kids are too fat. Well, maybe if they cooked a healthy meal a few times a week, they’d (the kids) not be so fat?

Nothing wrong with being a little on the heavy side, though…I am not exactly Kate Moss myself. But I don’t eat greasy, fatty ballpark food every day, and I never eat at fast-food joints. I don’t really need to be looking for a list of best diet pills. I don’t lose weight, but I don’t gain, either. I enjoy the junky stuff at the ball games, but at home, I cook healthy food.

It’s also possible that the fat kid at the ballpark has some sort of medical condition that is going untreated.  In any case, I feel sorry for him.  Getting that heavy at such a young age is dangerous, as it often leads to heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses.  His parents, wherever they are, really need to do something about this, before it is too late.