December 2011
Happy holidays!
At this time of year we all have parties and like to imbibe in a little cocktail now and then. Therefore, I wanted to share my Holiday Cocktail with you. I made a batch a couple of weeks ago and it was fantastic. Every few nights now my husband will look at me and say: Gee I think I need one of those Holiday Cocktails!
It has mulling spices in the background and you know it's the holiday's when the mulling spices come out. It's a great color, and is quite festive. If you are having guests over it would the perfect special cocktail for the occasion.
I hope you make it and enjoy it with your friends and family. I wish you love and happiness and the best holiday season ever!
November 2011 - Greens. Many years ago I had a simple brothy soup with escarole and it was so delicious. I don’t really remember what all was in the soup but I was sure it was the escarole that made it so good. Since that day I have wanted to cook with it but only recently found it. I put some in my morning energy drink, since I always add a green, and then I decided to add it to the lentil soup I was making. It contains beta carotene, vitamin C, folate, calcium, even a little Iron. I have been learning about the health benefits of greens and we are enjoying them more often. I also use greens in my morning energy smoothie, in addition to stir fry’s and soups. Recently I started adding some to our salads to so get in a little more nutrition. I often buy organic lettuces in the bags and at the same time I will get some greens. Kale, chard, spinach, arugula, escarole, these are all powerhouses of nutrition. They can take some getting used to, as some can be somewhat bitter, but once you start eating them regularly you will gain an appreciation of them. And your body will thank you.
In the kitchen…..
Garlic Confit. I am always looking for something new to make. I get a thrill out of a new experience and most of the time the results are good so it’s worth it. Recently I made garlic confit to give as Holiday gifts. It involves peeling a lot of garlic! That is the only part that is somewhat tedious. Somewhat tedious? But if you can get through that the rest is easy. The garlic is slowly simmered, with a few other ingredients, in olive oil until they are cooked. The confit can be used for a number of different dishes, anything that you would use garlic in you could use this, and the bitterness is gone, so it is sweet and luscious. So sweet in fact that making some crostini and using the garlic as a topping is fantastic!
I wanted to give you something that says it is Fall so I posted my recipe for Butternut Squash Soup. This is a great first course for a dinner party, or to have in the fridge for easy meals. A cup and soup and a sandwich for lunch anyone?
I also posted a Quinoa Breakfast Cereal recipe. Sounds odd doesn’t it? I thought so too but was I ever surprised. It is delicious and provides a complete protein that will give you energy all day long.
October 2011- Ahhhh.......fall is here. Without a doubt it is my favorite time of year. I love the weather, the cool evenings, and the change in the way we eat. Eating with the seasons is one of the best things you can do for your body. We now can enjoy the fall squashes, butternut, acorn, spaghetti. They are great to cook with and provide filling comfort food. They can be used in soups, pasta, risotto but you can also keep it simple by cutting it into chucks and roasting it on a sheet pan. These squashes are high in fiber and nutrient dense so try to make them part of your regular diet.
I am moving along in nutrition school. I am now 6 months in and at the mid point and I am being asked to prepare to see clients. Yippee! With that in mind, I am building my web site. What I study in school is nothing compared to me trying to understand the technology of web design. Not a clue! It's been frustrating to say the least. However, my web site will be up and running by next month, if it kills me.
I made a few changes to my diet and one of them is going gluten free. It was necessary to give my digestive system time to heal. Grains can be very hard on the digestive track. It is fairly easy these days to eat gluten free. There are some wonderful web sites with gluten free recipes that actually taste good. Besides practicing how to make a meal without wheat, rye and barley I wanted to have something sweet, dessert like. The first thing I made was lemon almond biscotti made with almond flour. I think of it this way: I can have the almond ones or nothing. When faced with nothing, the almond ones taste great!
I have been trying many of the super foods on the market. One of the first I tried was Goji berries because they sounded like they wouldn't be difficult to get used to. They are considered a super food because of their nutrient and antioxidant content. These babies are chalk full of vitamins, minerals, and amino acids, among other things. Some believe they are beneficial in helping to fight cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases. I take a small hand full as a snack or add them to my morning energy smoothie.
Cheese Class. Last year I took a cheese class and learned how to make mozzarella. From there I was able to make ricotta and goat cheese, all pretty easy and very tasty. These types of cheeses are for us beginners. After a few sessions you really can be proficient at making cheese. I decided recently, however, that I was ready to move to the next level, so I took a class on mold ripened cheeses. I learned how to make Camembert, which is similar to brie but smaller and little firmer. It was a great class because besides making cheese they also did a cheese tasting, serving us 4 very special cheeses, along with Champagne. (Everything is better with Champagne!) We discussed the cheeses in detail, who made the cheese, how they got started, their claim to fame, etc. It was an inspirational class. I knew I always loved cheese, but now I know I really really love cheese. I’ve had a dream of owning a cheese shop. Hum.....can I work that into my future somehow?
I posted two hearty recipes to my food blog this month. Both are perfect one dish meals for fall. The first is Lentils with rice and caramelized onions. This dish is hearty and I served it with steamed broccoli because I wanted a green vegetable in the meal. But you can serve it alone, or with any other vegetable you happen to love. The second recipe is Thai Beef with Snow Peas. This is the real surprise dish for me. It is not something that would normally attract me but I was looking for something new. I started making this last year and it has become one of my go to dishes for a quick week night dinner. I think the reason for that is that I can actually remember all the ingredients if I am standing in the market wondering what I am going to make for dinner J To make it healthier I would use brown rice instead of white. J To see the recipes go to: http://denisesdelights.blogspot.com.
Did you know? Cinnamon helps stabilize blood sugar because it stimulates insulin receptors and inhibits an enzyme that inactivates them, thereby increasing cells’ ability to use glucose. Just one gram per day (approximately ¼ to ½ teaspoon) yields a 20 percent drop in blood sugar, and reduces cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well. Cinnamon also reduces cellular inflammation—a key age accelerator. The mere scent of cinnamon enhances the brain’s cognitive processing, including attention, memory, and visual-motor speed.
Happy fall to you all!
September 2011 Berries berries everywhere. One of the wonderful things about summer are all the fresh berries. Everywhere you look there are wonderful fresh inexpensive berries and they are so good for you. With that in mind I made strawberry jam for my husband. It's his fav. I gotta tell you, it takes a load of strawberries to make one cup of jam. I buy only the best, ripest, organic berries I can find and I add only a little sugar because you’ve got to allow the fruit to be the major flavor. The more sugar you use the more it tastes only like sugar and you lose the taste the fruit. Some of you have asked me about selling my strawberry jam but I would have to price it so high to make any money off of it I feel it might be prohibitive. How much would you pay for a jar of homemade strawberry jam? If you have thoughts one way or the other drop me a line.
I also made tangerine marmalade. Sounds delicious doesn't it? Well it wasn't! This story is to let you know that even people like me who cook all the time have disasters. I found this recipe months ago and had been dying to try it. My Meyer lemon marmalade is quite popular so I thought this would be a nice little twist on the same concept. BUT NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! The recipe called for pectin which I usually do not use. The few times I have used it I do not like the final consistency of the product so I try to make jams without it. Well, this recipe called for it and my intuition told me not to use it but I decided not to mess with the recipe, but to make it as the recipe called. WRONG! I knew it. It was disgusting. 8 jars of tangerine jam out the window! That just makes me so darn mad when that happens. But it is all part of testing to get to a final product that is good. I normally trust my intuition, but this time I went against it and look what happened.
We were at the farmers market on Saturday and every booth had tomatoes on sale. It was tomato city. I was walking around thinking to myself what in the heck can I do with tomatoes so I can take advantage of these prices? Besides eating them in salads and sandwiches….hum….I know! I can make some oven dried tomatoes; these are similar to sun dried tomatoes but faster by using the oven. I slice them thin and sprinkle on some tomato spice and stick them in a 250 degree oven overnight. Now I have a jar of them to use all through the winter months.
It was picnic season for us all during the months of July and August. One local park puts on free outdoor concerts on Saturday night so we pack upthe picnic basket, grab a bottle of wine, and head over to relax under the stars. The setting is quite lovely, we are all on the grass looking out at the lake. Kids are dancing, people are visiting, dogs are getting picnic treats. It's a great way to spend the evening. And it's free. Gotta love that. I hope you had a great summer.
As part of my health coach training I am going to start adding little helpful hints about health to my newsletter. Did you know? Pistachios may reduce diabetes risk. According to a study in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2011;65:696-702), eating pistachios after a meal could reduce the risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease. Two groups of volunteers were studied, one group eating them with a meal, and the other directly after a meal. Glucose readings were taken and the group that ate them after the meal had lower glucose levels than the other group. 56 grams of pistachios seem to be level at which a lowered glucose had an effect. (56 grams equals 1.98 ounces) Once again proving that food is medicine!
Plum Jam - My friend Ray has a plum tree in his backyard. I was visiting him a couple weeks ago and he sent me home with a very big bag of plums from the tree. I don't think I realized just how many there were until I got home and washed them and then figured out what I was going to make. I made a plum tart for dessert one night which I topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Can't get much more summery than that. Then I started making jam. I had to break it up into two days, using only the ripest fruit in the first batch, then waiting for the rest of the fruit to ripen to make the second batch. Let me tell you just how tired I was of standing at the kitchen counter pitting plums. I ended up with 18 jars of plum jam. Guess I have enough for the year!
I went to see the movie Forks over Knives which basically presents the studies that have been done on people who eat animal products and the high rate of disease and the people who are vegetarian and have low incidents of disease. It does make you think. I mean, I am at the age where I have to think about stuff like this. My body is not young anymore and I don't bounce back as easily as I once did. That being said I decided to go off meat for 30 days. Therefore, I have been doing alot more vegetarian cooking and I find it very satisfying. I get in the kitchen and try a couple of new recipes each week so that I can test them and see what I am going to add to my permanent repertoire. During the summer I find it very easy to eat this way because the corn and tomatoes and such I can eat everyday. The other night I made corn soup and tomato sandwiches for dinner. Heaven. That intense summer flavor you get now only lasts so long. But I digress. You should go see the movie. It's interesting, you might learn something, and you'll be in the know.
On my food blog this month I posted recipes for basil mayo, tomato sandwiches with basil mayo, and corn soup. I hope you give them a try. It's prime summer food. If I eat nothing but corn and tomatoes for the next couple of months I will be a happy woman.
July 15, 2011 As promised, this month I am writting about my pizza class. I have to say that if I could choose only one food to eat for the rest of my life I would probably choose pizza. I have made pizza at home several times and it's not the easiest thing to do. The results are wonderfull but it's an undertaking. I am lucky that I have Pizzeria Ortica, in Orange County, close to home and they make the best pizza. A freshly made margarita pizza and a glass of wine is heaven on earth.
I signed up for a class with an upscale pizzeria for pizza class. I had read articles about this place and the chef who has mastered the art of authentic Naples style pizzas. I was amazed at the various styles of pizza, one little change to the recipe and you can go from soft, chewy, crunchy, thick, thin, cracker like. Whatever you prefer you can make it the way you want. We were up to our elbows in flour for the dough and then had to learn how to properly stretch it out with our hands. No rolling pins! And that little well around the edge takes practice, I had trouble with it. But if you can get it down right you get your reward when your pizza comes out of the oven with blisters. Yum! We were shown the pizza oven and told about the wood and how the heat sits up at the top of the oven and how to get the pizza in and move it around so that all sides are cooked evenly. This was not an easy thing to do. The teacher had to jump in a couple times and resue us or we have have had totally burned pizza. But that's the fun of a hands on class. We mixed the dough and stretched it out, then chose our toppings and cooked our own pizza. We then moved on to making a pasta dish were we not only made the dough but practiced rolling it out, filling it, cutting it, then cooking it. The filling was a pecorino and pear that was absolutely divine! At the end of the class we all sat around a large table chatting and enjoying the fruits of our labor along with a complimentary glass of wine. Now that's a great cooking class!
June 8, 2011. The chocolate class was new for me. The class was held at a cute little shop with beautiful hand made chocolates in the glass cases. You know the kind....you walk in and stop dead in your tracks....the beauty of artfully prepared foods laying there..... waiting for me to eat them........the smell is a chocoholics dream. The shop is quite impressive. We were taken to the back room which was packed full of ingredients and tools for chocolate making. I had to take it all in for a few minutes.....paints, nuts, sugars, chocolate molds in every imaginable shape, tools of the trade everywhere I looked. I realized I had a big smile on my face! We were shown chocolate beans, the way it comes in it's natural state, which I had never seen. Then we were taught how to temper the chocolate on a big stainless steal slab. Ganache was made and chilled and before we knew it we were making truffles, with both dark and white chocolate. Hands on classes are always the best, you get to feel the food and see the completed product, plus if you need help the teacher is right there to assist you. I brought home the truffles I had made in class and served them for dessert the next night, as it just happened that we were having dinner guests. The timing couldn't have been better! And the bottom line was that I found out how easy it is to make truffles. These classes are always lots of fun because I meet new like minded people.
May 13, 2011. I spent the month of April perfecting my lemon bread recipe. I made it and made it and made it, adjusting the ingredients, until I loved it. Then I figured if I loved it maybe others would too. I tested it on my husband first and his reaction was "wow that's loaded!" I figured that was a good thing....right? Then I tested it on my neighbor and she could not stop saying how much she loved it. I gave her two pieces, one for her and one for her husband, and her husband didn't get any! I'm taking that as a good thing as well, don't you agree? I also took a loaf to a friends house for dinner and they were very complimentary and asked for the recipe :) With all that I had to add it to my product line. There are three kinds of lemon flavor in the mix along with ground almonds. When Meyer lemons are available I use those in the recipe, which gives the bread a unique lemon flavor. A lemon glaze is drizzled over the top of the bread while it is warm so it soaks in. My mouth is watering just talking about it. The bread is made fresh to order and sells for $18.00.
