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Posts Tagged ‘food’

Quinoa and Shrimp Salad

Posted in Health, Recipes, tagged , , on October 12, 2009| 7 Comments »

P1080937_1Always on the lookout for healthy recipes, I found several interesting ones that use quinoa. Quinoa, which is pronounced KEEN-WAH, is a tiny Peruvian seed. Although it resembles couscous and can be served like rice, it is far more nutritious than either; quinoa is packed with all the essential amino acids. I saw this recipe by Martha Rose Shulman last year and have made this tasty and nutritious dish several times. Of course, like everything else I do, I had to tweak it a bit. Attractive mounded on a bed of leafy greens, it serves about six.

Here’s my adaptation of Ms. Shulman’s recipe:
Step 1: Basic Quinoa
1 cup quinoa
3 cups water or stock
1/2 teaspoon salt (just a pinch worked for me)

1. Put quinoa in a mesh sieve and run under cold water to remove a bitter and protective coating on the seeds.

2. Bring the water or stock to a boil and put in quinoa seeds and salt. Bring water to a boil again, cover pot, turn down heat to low, and simmer for 15 minutes or until seeds look translucent and tiny curly threads appear.

3. Drain liquid and fluff with fork. Let cool if using for salad.

Note: Cooked quinoa will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator.

Step 2: Dressing
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tablespoon seasoned rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 small garlic clove, minced
pinch of cayenne pepper
salt to taste
2 teaspoons sesame seed oil
1/4 cup canola oil
2 T buttermilk (I used soymilk because that was all I had)
2 teaspoons of sweet soy sauce

Step 3: Salad
3 cups cooked quinoa (use all that was prepared in step 1)
4 scallions, white and green parts, sliced thin
1 small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and diced
1/4 C chopped cilantro
1-2 cups bay shrimp or as much as desired

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the lime juice, vinegar, ginger, garlic, cayenne, salt, sesame seed oil, canola oil, buttermilk, and sweet soy.

2. In a salad bowl, combine the cooked and cooled quinoa, scallions, cucumber, and cilantro. Toss with the dressing. Toss in the shrimp just before serving, so that it does not “cook” in the lime juice.

Here’s to healthy eating!

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Friday’s Fresh Five (10/9/09)

Posted in Helping Others, Style and fashion, tagged , , , , , , on October 8, 2009| 2 Comments »

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Another week has gone by and it’s time for another Friday’s Fresh Five!

#1 A Worthwhile Quote:
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. – Marcus Aurelius, 121-180, Roman Emperor and Philosopher

#2 A Market Tip from Bob (my dad)
Although oranges are available in the supermarkets year-round, their peak season is actually October through late March. When selecting oranges, look for thin, smooth-skinned ones versus thick and deeply-pitted ones. Always select firm and heavy oranges. Weight is usually indicative of the amount of juice in a citrus.

#3 An Economical and Environmental Tip:
Buy a foaming soap dispenser. These dispensers require very little soap product, thus saving you money, as well as, saving landfills from additional plastic garbage. I purchased my foam pumps from Solutions.com but any Bath & Body Works Gentle Foaming Hand Soap pump can be refilled with liquid soap and water. Three tablespoons of liquid soap topped off with as much water as needed to fill the container and you’re set for at least a month. You’ll be amazed at how infrequently you have to refill these pumps!

#4 A Style Tip:
Accessories tell your story. I don’t remember where I heard this, but I like it. Whether it’s the red handbag slung over your shoulder or the way you tie your silk scarf, an accessory is an additional opportunity to express yourself. What’s your story?

#5 Do a Good Thing
Give credit where it is due. As you go about your daily activities and you come across someone who has been particularly nice or extraordinarily helpful to you, thank them or better yet tell his/her supervisor. It’s seems so easy to complain, but so difficult to give a deserved pat on the back.

Enjoy your weekend!

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Living Off The Fat Of The Land

Posted in Gardening, tagged , , , , on October 7, 2009| 2 Comments »

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The leaves are turning varying shades of brown and are dropping one by one. I’m not referring to the oak trees that line my yard, but to my tomato plants. It’s that time of the year when summer’s bounty comes to an end. Summer’s bounty? I hardly think my harvest qualifies to be called a bounty. Here’s an accurate recap of my harvest: My cherry tomatoes were not so cheery; my peppers were only a little peppy; my zucchini zeroed-out; and my cukes went cuckoo. I’ll be the first to admit that I have a brown thumb, a dark chocolate brown one to be exact.

Every year I have this primal need to grow vegetables and live off the fat of the land. This year I went to great lengths and purchased Earth Boxes after seeing the glorious ads of luscious tomato plants growing skyward and after reading scores of testimonials from people reaping bushels worth of produce. I set the boxes on the south side of my yard so they would receive plenty of nice hot summer sun. Following the directions exactly, by adding fertilizer strips and attaching drip irrigation lines to the water tube, I had great expectations. As each little blossom of potential fruit developed, I marveled at the miracle of nature. Then disaster inevitably happened. Appearing like a light dusting of snow on the leaves of my plants, white flies came from out of nowhere and sucked the life juices from the besieged plants. Bees started avoiding my crops. Were my crops inhospitable? I was forced to perform cross pollination on my zucchini blossoms using a not so scientific looking elementary school paint brush. Large and lovely tomatoes would form to perfection only to have their beauty marred by the ugly brown spots of blossom end rot.

My sister-in-law and I were lamenting the other day about the failures of our summer vegetable gardens. The only tomato plant that had performed well for her was a neglected rogue volunteer in the corner of her yard. I recited my gardening woes to her and humorously said that my husband and I could not live off the fat of the land unless we could survive on rosemary, which is the only plant that seems to grow without any effort on our part. She laughed and suggested I write a post on 101 uses for rosemary. That’s a challenge for the future!

Here’s a photo that puts my gardening skills into perspective. Although, I was very appreciative of my pepper plant’s effort to produce something, it was certainly not on a grand scale, especially when compared to it’s market counterpart!
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I’d love to hear your vegetable garden “success” stories!

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Friday’s Random Five

Posted in Helping Others, Recycling, Style and fashion, tagged , , , , , , , on October 2, 2009| Leave a Comment »

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Hello everyone! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog and for the positive feedback! If you like my blog you can subscribe to it by clicking on either “Posts” or “Comments” at the top right hand corner of my blog. A page will appear and there will be a section at the top asking you to subscribe to this feed using Google, My Yahoo, Bloglines, or Bookmarks. Select one of the programs and click on the subscribe button. I find Google or Yahoo both work well. New posts to my blog will show up on your Yahoo or Google home page automatically.

Something new to my blog every week will be my Friday’s Random Five post. Every Friday I am going to post five short random thoughts or ideas. David Letterman has his Top Ten List and Jay Leno has his Ten at Ten, so I figured I could do at least half of what they do! Hope this first installment of Friday’s Random Five gives you some food for thought.

#1 A Nice Thought:
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. -Thich Nhat Hanh-

#2 A Recycling Idea:
Straight from a Hints from Heloise column – recycle your empty tissue boxes by using them as trash containers in your cars. The cube size would be great if used in this capacity.

#3 An Idea from the Kitchen:
Peeling fresh ginger root is a breeze if you use the edge of a spoon and scrape the thin skin away. It’s the easiest way I’ve found to do it.

#4 A Fashion Tip:
This tip is for petite gals. Even though the oversized boyfriend look is really in vogue right now, keeping clothing proportions correct is essential for petites. Be careful not to wear your tops too long. Petites tops should not extend below the crotch. Remember this: The longer the top, the shorter the legs appear.

#5 A Kind Deed:
Take a bouquet of flowers over to a senior citizen’s care center and ask that it be given to a resident that needs some cheer.

That’s this week’s Friday’s Random Five. Have a great weekend!

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Chocolate and Coffee: What Could Be Better?

Posted in Recipes, tagged , , , on September 30, 2009| 2 Comments »

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Do you ever go into a coffee shop and take a slow deep breath to savor the aroma? I do. I love the smell of coffee, but oddly, I don’t drink it. Besides being a green tea type of person, the caffeine in coffee sends my heart into racing mode. Yes, I know green tea also contains caffeine, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to affect my body the same way.

Some of my favorite food memories are coffee-based. My Auntie Priscilla used to make a satiny, chewy coffee candy as part of her Christmas gift to my family. These little bites of coffee were each rolled in wax paper and then finished off with a twist at each end. It’s a prized family recipe now and it always reminds me of her.

Another wonderful coffee-based memory is the Coffee Crunch Cake once served at the now defunct Blum’s Bakery in San Francisco. It was a confection that consisted of layers of light sponge cake and fresh whipped cream, all covered with chunky bits of light-as-air coffee crunch topping. I can almost taste it now!

So after going out for coffee this afternoon with some friends, or in my case, a chai latte, I was in the mood for some coffee and baking. I’d had a recipe on my desk for a while and decided to try it. Chocolate Cupcakes with Coffee Cream Filling is a Paula Deen recipe, so it’s a given that it’s decadent and probably not low in calories! The cupcakes are made with a batter that contains fresh brewed coffee, injected with coffee cream, and topped off with coffee butter.

Overall the cupcakes were delicious. The cake part was moist and the cream filling was light, but flavorful. The butter cream was a little too sweet for me, but really how bad can a mixture of cream cheese, butter, sugar, and coffee be? I did not use the chocolate covered coffee beans for garnish because I didn’t have any, but I did sprinkle some organic raw cacao nibs on top. They’re not sweet and have a nice chocolate crunch. You can find these at Whole Foods.

One thing I would do differently the next time I make these is to use a pastry bag and pastry tip to squeeze the filling into the cupcakes. The screw lid of my Wilton squeeze bottle kept coming off and there is more wastage of cream since some of it inevitably gets stuck in the bottle. If you’d like to try the recipe just click on this link.

Again, what could be better than chocolate and coffee? Enjoy!!

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College Care Packages

Posted in Gift Ideas, Kids, Parenting, tagged , , on September 22, 2009| 3 Comments »

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When I was a freshman in college I received a care package from an out of state cousin. It was the first care package I’d ever received and, although I don’t really remember the contents of the package, other than dried prunes, it taught me about how simple gestures can mean so much. One of my favorite Maya Angelou quotes sums it up, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I have never forgotten how my cousin’s thoughtful gesture lifted my spirits. One of my nieces has been away at college for about a month now and homesickness can set in at about this time, so I’m putting together a care package for her. In a U.S. Postal Service flat rate box you can cram as much as you want as long as the box does not exceed 70 pounds. The post office will give you the boxes free, you fill them, and then pay the flat rate for them to be shipped. They come in four sizes and the rates vary from approximately $5.00 to $14.00. Delivery time is usually about two days. It’s better to mail these packages at the beginning of the week, so that they arrive midweek and do not sit in the college mail room over the weekend.

Here’s a list of ideas to include in college care packages:
Sundries
scented face mask
nail polish
lip balm
hand lotion
shower gel
hand sanitizer
ear plugs
cute Bandaids

Food
pretzels
granola bars
microwave popcorn
microwavable cakes like Betty Crocker’s Warm Delights
cookies – homemade or store bought
dried fruit
beef jerky
instant oatmeal
ramen
Easy Mac
Rice Krispies Treats
candy
tea bags
hot cocoa packages
beverage pouches for water bottles such as Crystal Lite On The Go

Miscellaneous
magazines
seasonal decorations
water bottle
bubbles
DVDs
CDs
stress toy
Chlorox wipes
Shout wipes
Post-its
USB flash drive
pens
gift cards
quarters for laundry (if they’re not using laundry cards)
Frisbee
mini football

I’d love to learn what favorite items you include in college care packages!

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