Egg Salad Wow

I am not  a fan of egg salad sandwiches.  And neither was the creator of the delicious one at the left.  But my neighbor found this recipe and told me about it.  He was so enthusiastic, I thought I'd give it a try.  I followed the egg cooking directions exactly, down to the second on the timing.  I did depart from the recipe on add-ins.  I only added chives this time.

You have to click on this sandwich and read the story it and then try it yourself.  You will thank me, and I will then thank my neighbor for finding it.

The recipe was posted in 2007; aren't we glad the internet can search so well?

Signs of Fall or Extreme Heat?

The other morning I found these on my driveway.....

I looked up and saw this....

and this......

We have had plenty of rain, but our heat has hovered near 100 degrees for weeks. 
Are we going to have an early Color Show this year???

Iceberg Goes Uptown

Remember when the only lettuce available for salads at home was iceberg? Then romaine, microgreens, baby lettuce, etc stormed the market and iceberg sat somewhere in the produce section, lonely and overlooked.

Steak houses, looking for something "new", brought out "the wedge".....a huge plate of calories.  A wedge of iceberg covered with blue cheese dressing, bacon bits, diced tomatoes.....a meal in itself.

Frankly, a wedge is too hard to eat.  But I did not want to go back to the chopped up iceberg presentation of my childhood and early marriage. 

Enter my "best friend"...the mandoline.  I love the lettuce at Subway...and you know how it gets that way...shredded.  So I decided to shred my head of iceberg.  It makes it a lot easier to eat, although I do miss the "crunch" that iceberg is famous for.

So whether or not this salad is as good as chopped iceberg or a "wedge", it surely is fancy.  It would be easier to eat on a taco, too.

Not Red

This is a BLT....what is different about it?

Not red, you say?  Well, that is correct.

Made with yellow plum tomatoes.  Tastes pretty much the same, maybe not quite as "acidy".

I still think red is prettier

My Two Best Friends

These are my two best friends in the kitchen this summer.......

My mandoline

and......

My microwave bacon cooker.

The mandoline slices the most beautiful veggies. It makes eating fresh onions, peppers, and all that so much easier.

The bacon cooker cooks the bacon nice and flat and crispy. I do not use paper towels while cooking....I put a microwave food cover on while it cooks and then blot up the grease from the bacon strips.

Gorgeous and Useful

 

I just simply have to brag. This inset bookcase was installed by my son and the decorative painting done by his wife. They put it in the upstairs hallway just outside of Harrison's room. I can't wait to see it in person.

He swears it just took a day to make.  Of course he did a lot of studying of the situation and figuring it out in advance, just like his Dad.   To make it easier they bought a ready-made bookcase.  Sounds like a great idea to me!!!

I'll have to remember this idea for his Dad to do when we get our retirement home in Georgia!

Note:  I just got an email from Lindsay and she says she did not paint it, she bought removable ( vinyl sticker type) from the wall decor department at Kohl's. They can also be found at various places online.

Leftovers Taking Over

Last night I realized my kitchen cabinet had no more fridge containers......they were all full of dribs and drabs of fresh veggies in the refrigerator.  Uh Oh...

Fast forward to lunchtime today, following a trip to the farmer's market.  I really could not justify digging into the fresh purchases while the bits and pieces from last weeks trip languished, just about ready for the rubbish bin.

So....I got out all those containers and dumped the contents on the cutting board and started chopping.

Then I softened a big tortilla wrapper in the microwave, cooked some bacon, dumped on some Ranch dressing and piled up the goodies.

Wrap and Roll!

I did serve one item from the market trip.....

Glammed Up Egg and Toast

Toast and egg is a basic, simple breakfast. And if you don't actually like eggs first thing in the morning, impossible to eat.

The photo on the right looks like weird shaped waffles, right? Wrong. It is (artisinal) bread, dipped in a mixture of egg and milk and cooked in a waffle iron. Ha.

Healthier than waffles, because those two slices of bread are coated in one whole egg. Healthier than french toast, because no oil or butter was used to fry the toast. And even the syrup (added after the photo was taken) is a small amount because I bought the new Log Cabin with cane sugar and it is thick enough to not glug all over your plate.

The blueberries and peaches take it up another notch, of course.

So, get out your bread of choice, whisk up an egg with milk (and flavored coffee creamer), preheat your waffle iron, soak the bread in the egg mixture and cook it on the hot iron. Voila!

watering can_JPEG

The water falling from the watering can was scanned from a magazine page and I created this page around it. Just because I wanted to.....

And, yes, this should be on my other blog; but the default from picasa came here.  So all you foodies, enjoy the scrapping!

If you click on the photo, it will take you to my web album.  Click on it again and it will enlarge.

Polenta is the cornmeal mush of the new Millenium...

I tried "polenta" when I first started seeing it appear in the recipe/menu section of magazines.....bought one of those "chub" packages in the produce section, sliced it, fried it, and tossed it into the garbag.  Ick. 

I continued to see it mentioned in magazines, online, and on local restaurant menus.  Avoided it like the plague. 

An article appeared recently that suggested polenta in place of pasta and rice, using either a box of instant polenta or adding water to the stuff in the chub pack.  Surely there is a bag called 'polenta' in the supermarket for me to cook.  Nope.
So I come home and google "polenta"....guess what it is?  Good old fashioned southern cornmeal mush!  Now I can cook that.   I headed to my pantry and got out my bag of cornmeal and went to work.

I served it with roasted zucchini and tomatoes and it was absolutely delicious.  I actually liked it better than rice or pasta with this particular vegetable mixture.
The zucchini and tomato part is here.  I did not have a garlic bulb this time, so I just tossed some jarred garlic into the roasted vegetables when I put them into the skillet to heat with some water and 2 T tomato paste (for richness).

To make the polenta, or cornmeal mush:

For 4 servings:

Whisk together 1 cup cornmeal with 1 cup water.  Bring 2 cups salted water to a boil.  Stir in the cornmeal mixture and simmer, stirring, until it tastes done.  The recipe said to stir til thick, but mine thickened up immediately, so I kept tasting it til it tasted cooked, not like raw starch.  Stir in butter and add more salt to taste.  Ta da!!!

"polenta"                                                                            "cornmeal mush"

The above photos are free from bing.com and I searched 'polenta' for one photo and 'cornmeal mush' for the other.  Admit that polenta sounds much more elegant.

And before you comment that, of course, polenta is simply cornmeal mush...everybody knows that,  I want to defend myself.   I knew that polenta was just cooked cornmeal, I just figured I had to buy cornmeal ground specifically for polenta.....I mean, polenta just sounds so exotic compared to cornmeal mush....

And, please tell me why anybody would opt for mixing water into the chub to get their cornmeal mush, when all it takes is cornmeal and water + butter and 20 minutes of your time???????

Public Service Announcement

Good news that the Gulf oil spill seems to be ending. 

The news constantly talks about oil on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and people have cancelled vacations to go elsewhere.  Yes, many beaches do have oil globs on them, but not all. 

Here is a photo of the beach that I took 2 weeks ago in Panama City, Florida.  Not retouched.

Also, our local seafood market was keeping the displays full and the fish and shellfish was delicious.

I know school is reconvening and vacations are over, but I wanted people to know that not ALL of the Gulf beaches were ruined......................

Watermelon musings

I finally made it to the farmer's market today and got a wedge of fresh watermelon.  It was so sweet!  Everytime I eat fresh watermelon I think about my mom.  She did not really like watermelon; she would eat a few bites of her slice's "heart" and push it aside.  She grew up with a watermelon patch and the kids would cut open a watermelon out in the field and eat the "heart" and move on.  At least she did.  Her brothers might have finished them off, being boys with appetites and all.

My Dad grew up on a farm, not sure if they grew watermelons;  he put salt on his.  I always thought that odd, too, but I now put pepper on mine!!!  And sometimes salt.

I am into digiscrapping now and was inspired to make this page:

And, yes, I know you cannot read the journaling on the page, that is why I told you the story!! 

Also, I made the elements on the pages....wheee!  I use freebie clip art and then turn them into embellishments in PS2.  It took me weeks to learn to do this. I use MemoryMixer to make my digipages.

Stack Happy

Yum....look at this salad.  We had our neighbors over to dinner Friday night and she asked to bring something, so I suggested a salad.  Assuming some chopped up romaine.  The doorbell rings and in they come with the most gorgeous stacked salad...beefsteak tomatoes, red onions, fresh mozarella, fresh feta (a lovely surprise), fresh basil.  All resting on  green leaf lettuce and dressed with  balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  I could have just had this salad for dinner and skipped the dishes I made.

For the record, I served whole wheat ravioli topped with a roasted zucchini/tomato sauce, margharita puff pastry pizza squares and homemade frozen peach yogurt.  As to the yogurt, I preferred the mango version I made earlier in the week.