christine-murphy dot net

Rick Bayless, celebrity chef, cookbook author, and host of the PBS cooking show Mexico:  One Plate At A Time, has a large presence on Twitter (@Rick_Bayless).  He often answers his followers’ cooking questions, and offers recipes…all in 140 characters or less!  Running three highly-regarded restaurants in Chicago, he has little time to use his office furniture, and sit and answer questions, but somehow, he does it.

And now, he is running a new Twitter contest!  Each Monday, he will post a recipe from his new book, Fiesta at Rick’s, on Twitter, 140 characters.  To get a chance to win, make the recipe, take a picture of it, and email it to his office by the following Saturday.  Rick will choose up to 10 winners per week, each lucky winner will get an autographed copy of the new book.  Contest info here.

Hmmm, this could be a bit of a challenge.  140 characters does not allow for details of a recipe, so unless you go and look at a copy of the book for further details, you might have a hard time making it, unless you are a REALLY good cook!  But if you already have the book, why would you enter a contest to win a copy…unless you wanted the autographed version.

I did look to see if it’s available for the Amazon Kindle (affiliate link).  It’s not, but if so, I might have bought that and then tried each week to win the paper book complete with Rick’s John Hancock.  But as it is, I’ll just try to make the recipes from the Twitter posts!  I think that’s the whole idea, anyway!

Good luck to all who enter!

Here is a very easy and tasty recipe, direct from Carrabba’s brand-new Signature Pasta Meals Menu.  They emailed it to members of their mailing list, and I thought I’d share it here, because I made it and it was SO YUMMIE!

You can download the recipe card HERE, as well. (.pdf reader needed)

I used sweet Italian sausage for this, but you could use all hot, or a combination of the two.  I also just used plain canned tomato sauce, one 8-ounce can = 1 cup.  Kind of annoying that the bigger cans are just 15 ounces, just under two cups, but three of those cans will still work just fine.  Of course, if you have your own recipe for homemade tomato sauce, as Carrabba’s most certainly does, you could use that as well.

For the fennel, we’re not talking about seeds here, but the actual vegetable.  It looks like a big round bulb, with stalks that look like celery growing out of it, and it has little fine leafy fronds on top.  The pretty green fronds would make a nice garnish for this dish, or just save them for some other purpose.  They are also good in soups.  At many stores, fennel is sold in the produce section as “anise”, as it does have a mild licorice flavor to it.

This is a quick, easy and satisfying dish, so quick you will certainly not have to worry about looking for the best age spot remover while waiting for it to cook. Not unless you have the same stove that I do, that is!  Yeah, it’s the same sears one, and it still sucks; in fact it sucks even more now!

Enjoy this dish!

The fine folks over at Mr. Food.com have another great book giveaway for you!  They will be giving away FIVE copies of this book, “What’s New Cupcake?” by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.  This book contains many creative ideas for professional looking cupcakes, without requiring the knowledge and education of a professional pastry chef.  These ideas use candy and other easy-to-find grocery store items to make great looking cupcakes.

For example, check out these Corn on the Cob Cupcakes.  This recipe was featured on Mr. Food’s nationally syndicated TV cooking segment, the video to which is available at this link.  Don’t they look SO like real corn on the cob?  Forget the Lipofuze and other weight loss stuff for once, and have some fun!

To enter to win a copy of this book, all you have to do is go to the contest page and fill out the form.  You can gain extra entries by blogging about the contest, Tweeting about it, or linking to MrFood.com on your sidebar or blogroll.  The deadline to enter is July 11, 2010 at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time.  Good luck!

I finally broke down and bought one.  In case you haven’t heard, the Kindle (friend’s affiliate link) has come down in price, from $259 to $189.  I had decided that when it dropped down below $200, I’d buy one.  Well, now it IS under $200, and I ordered one, I got it yesterday.  I could have had it a few days sooner, because they offer FREE 2-day shipping for the Kindle…however, to take advantage of this, you can’t have it shipped to a P.O. box.  I’d rather be safe than sorry, as I can’t really get packages and mail at home, and sometimes even having stuff sent to Mike’s work is a pain.  So I went for the regular free Super-Saver shipping so I could have it sent USPS to the P.O. box.

So far, I love it.  With my crappy eyesight, it is actually much easier to read than a paper book.  There is the option of increasing the font sizes if needed, but the default is easy enough for me to read.  Also, it can save money.  Often, the Kindle editions of books are cheaper than the paper versions (but not always).  They have a HUGE collection of free and almost-free books, as well, I’ve already started taking advantage of a lot of those.  Don’t spend money on the classics, because many of these titles are FREE.  I picked up a Wizard of Oz series, and a collection that has most of the Anne of Green Gables books (why it doesn’t have “Anne of Windy Poplars” and “Anne of Ingleside” is beyond me, but I’ll keep looking for those.

A lot of the free books are junky Harlequin Romances, but hey, they are FREE!  Sometimes you just want something light and mindless to read, so just download one of those, read it, and you can always delete it if you want to in order to make space for more books.  As it is, the Kindle holds well over a thousand books, but you can also store all your books online at Amazon, even if you delete them from the device, you can get then back whenever you want them.

Amazon also has a larger Kindle, the DX, and they have a new model of that coming out soon.  But frankly, I prefer the smaller one, as it even fits into my little Red Sox purse.  It’s great to have this to carry everywhere, so you are never short of reading material in even the most boring waiting rooms.  Why do doctor’s office waiting rooms only have BORING magazines and crap?  The DX does have more space for more books, but it’s also about as big as the Apple iPad, too big for me to carry everywhere.

Most importantly, there is the fact that we have so many paper books, that we’re running out of space to store them.  One of these days, something might happen, we might need some emergency assistance, and the responders will have to trip over piles and piles of books to get in here!

I’ll let you know more about how I like it as I use it more!

I’m telling you…for someone who doesn’t have cable at home, I sure do enough shopping on QVC.  Usually I watch the shows online for the Bare Escentuals Today’s Special Values.  There were such shows on a couple of weeks ago, I ordered a few items, and I went to the Q site to check the order status.

And that’s when I saw this really cool casserole getup.  It was the TSV sometime last week.   I immediately wanted it because it’s a multi-tasker.  I’d seen vertical roaster getups that did only that, no removable insert, only good if you’re making beer can chicken or otherwise roasting a bird vertically.  But this one is great because  it does have a removable insert, so you can use the pan as a regular casserole.  Since I’ve been in need of a nice stoneware lidded casserole, and the price was right, I went ahead and ordered it…in red, just like you see here.

It arrived the other day, but I have yet to use it.  I’ll post a full review and a recipe once I have tried it.  But it’s a good-sized, good quality cooking vessel.  The insert is non-stick is that means it would be easy to clean.  Unlike other stoneware, this can be used on the stovetop, in the oven, and even on the grill…some of the recipes that come with this call for putting this on the grill for stuff like beer-can chicken.  But it also gives oven instructions for those who do not have an outdoor grill.  The vessel is also fridge, freezer, and dishwasher safe, although I would not take it directly from the fridge or freezer and putting it on any hot surface, not until it reached room temperature.  To do so may cause the stoneware to crack.

Anyhoo, I need to stay off the Q website for a while.  Next thing you know, I might see some good deals on something like plasma mounts, and order, when I don’t even have a plasma TV! I will try to be good!