Helpful Hints

These are some helpful hints that I use and wanted to share with you:

1. When cooking with wine; buy something good enough to drink and you can use to cook as well.
2. If you don't like to chop shallots and garlic; buy it in the jars and keep in the fridge, it tastes the same and you don't get bits of garlic when you bite down.
3. Using canned beans in soups and chilis; it's great to want to make your own dried beans and use them but trust me the canned ones work just as well and are just as inexpensive if you add in time and energy to cook the dried.
4. Buying 3 bunches of Romaine in a bag is a much better deal than the mixed greens (which I love) so I chop up 1 bunch of romaine and I add broccoli or red cabbage or raddicio and save money.
5. Take stale bread or bread that is taking up room in your freezer or fridge and put it in the food processor to make your own bread crumbs and you can add you dried seasongs as needed. (Make sure if the bread is frozen that it is completely thawed and dry before processing).

I hope you can use some of these tips and Happy Cooking!

The Lobster Story

Food is food and pets are pets; when my two sons and i lived in Wilmington, we were at the coffee shop one day when a FedEx package arrive for me from Maine. Marc being the cynical one wanted to know what I had purchased and I explained nothing that I could remember. We  it turns out a friend of the three of us had gone to visit family in Maine and decided to send us two huge live maine Lobsters!
marc asked every customer that came in the shop, "how do we keep them from screaming when we cook them?" Many different ways were the answers that he received so he tried to find a tank that we could keep them in as pets but upon finding the expense; we decided to take them to my house on Sunday and cook them. We had kept them in the dry ice but but them in the freezer in a brown paper bag while we made the preparations to cook them.
I, in the meantime made fresh coleslaw, hushpuppies and potatoes to go with and some ice tea.

Time to cook the Lobsters!

I only had a certain size pot with a lid but figured it would be big enoug so I placed the water, a little oil and some butter in the pot with a dash of salt, the Lobsters were removed and with tongs I placed the first one in the water; only a small sound and then the second one would not go all the way in the pot so it was "screaming"; my son Marc took the lid of the pot and the tongs and proceeded to "get that thing " in the pot! My other son, Tim was laughing and trying to help all at the same time but it was hilarious! Well, the Lobsters cooked, we took them out got the "nut crackers" to get out the meat and we had a fantastic meal of Lobster from Maine! Need I say that Marc ate more Lobster than anyone! It was delicious!

Ways to made "Ades"

If you love lemonade, limeade or others try this:

I make my ice teas this way:

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
bring these to a simmer and start adding your fruit choices
I like to take the peel of a lemon(oils of the rind hold flavor) and the juice from half of lemon and add to the sugar/water mixture
When it comes back to a boil, remove from heat
Place in an airtight container when cooled.
When ready to make your favorite drink, add 1/4 cup of the lemon syrup to an 8 ounce glass
add ice and fill remainder with unsweet tea, add a slice of lemon to glass and enjoy!
If lemonade is your choice, just add ice and cold water.

Oranges are also terrific in this simple syrup!

Food and Me

As a child I was happy to eat most of the items I was served, as food was not always as plentiful as we would have liked. We had food, but it was staple foods, potatoes, beans, biscuits,cornbread,sometimes pork and always chicken.

We had birds, rabbit,squirrel,etc but I would eat the gravy, not the actual meat!

As I got older I discovered that farm raised food is always good and I learned over the years new ways to prepare it and I started my romance with Food about 30 years ago.

I hope to be able to share that love and romance with you on my blog, so welcome!