Posted on 05/10/2017 4:39:59 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
Sometimes we use Peapod, a grocery delivery service, so that we have a weekend now and then where we don’t have to do anything but stay home, read books, putter around the house. It’s very convenient, and when you factor-in the value of time - and in my area, the frustration of traffic - it isn’t very expensive. I wouldn’t do it every week – I like going into the store and looking around; but it’s very useful and efficient for our occasional use.
We discovered recently that Peapod is offering ‘meal kits’; and since some of you have had good experiences with services like Blue Apron, we decided to try one of these. We chose a Chicken Tortilla Soup that uses the Southwest Fiesta seasoning blend from ‘The Zen of Slow Cooking’, a very interesting little company which has recently won an award from the Specialty Food Association, in the 'new product' category.
This turned out very, very well! In fact, it’s the first thing other than plain bone broth that I’ve made in the slow-cooker that I was really happy with ;-) The ingredients came carefully packed and ready to go, with simple, clear instructions; and this was a great introduction to a company that I hadn’t heard of before.
The Zen of Slow Cooking website has many recipes for using the different seasoning blends that they offer – I’m anxious to try the Indian Dal blend - and it appears that recipes come with each blend that you buy; but you can certainly make use of these recipes with your own seasoning blends:
http://www.blog.thezenofslowcooking.com/recipes/
The Chicken Tortilla Soup recipe on their blog isn’t exactly the same as the kit we received, but almost the same. The only changes to the kit that I would make would be to add some salt; and it probably needed a little more broth, to be more like soup than stew. I'm anxious to try this from scratch, using their blend.
We found something in the grocery store recently that might be a boon for other low-carb eaters: Cheese Crisps that can be used as croutons in a low-carb salad. These are offered by Fresh Gourmet, and the Asiago flavor is my favorite. You can make these yourself, but with all the from-scratch cooking that low-carbers have to do, these are very convenient. (I have to confess to sometimes eating them like potato chips, as a snack ;-)
If you want to try making them from scratch, you can do them in a frying pan; but using parchment or Silpat and baking them in the oven is probably easiest. Here’s a recipe from ‘Low Carb Yum’:
https://lowcarbyum.com/easy-parmesan-crisps/
Recently a friend told me about ‘Bundt Pan Chicken’, which I’d never heard of but which seemed an interesting variation on ‘Beer Can Chicken’. This recipe from Food.Com suggests putting the bundt pan in a larger pan to catch the drippings; but some recipes suggest covering the ‘hole’ in the bundt tube with foil; I think that would be a better way to get all of that chicken juice to fall down and flavor your veggies; but you might want to use the 'under-pan' anyway, in case of leaks:
http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-dinner-in-a-bundt-pan-186341
-JT
For making mayo, the only kitchen gadget (submersion hand blender, blender, food processor) that works for me is whisking by hand. Not fun but it doesn’t take that long.
eye bleach!
Soy sauce really perks up beef steaks and pork chops.
Lazy Man’s Goulash Sauce
5 cans Italian stewed tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste
3 pounds Mild Italian sausage
Garlic salt
Minced garlic (1 TBSP)
Red Robin Seasoning
Italian seasoning
Basil
Oregano
Open all cans and put in crock pot
Brown the sausage well with Red Robin Seasoning and garlic salt to taste
Put the cooked meat into crock pot with all remaining seasonings (Your preference as to how much seasoning amounts used) and minced garlic.
Cook on high for 8-12 hours
Place in small containers and freeze completely.
It tastes better after frozen and thawed again.
Pour over any kind of pasta.
Here’s a really good home cooking Tex-Mex with a bit of Native American thrown in. Haven’t found a recipe that we didn’t like. I haven’t attempted to make his homemade sausages.
Y’all do know not to trust the online calorie and carb counters. Those online sites are so ridiculously off that even a single meal could be hundreds too high. Sure, it takes forever to calculate your numbers by hand with your actual product food’s nutritional label but it’s the only way you’ll get a fair total.
Fig and Melon Salad / Creamy Lemon Vinaigrette
--
VINAIGRETTE whisk/combine 2 tb lemon juice, 3 Tb ol/oil, tea honey, tsp champagne vinegar, Tb h/ cream, Salt, lots of pepper.
SALAD Toss Vinaigrette w/ 1/2 head red lettuce torn bite-size, 1/2 Tuscan melon cubes or slices, 1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced.
ASSEMBLY Plate dressed greens; finish w/ 5-7 fresh, ripe figs quartered, crumbled feta.
SERVE immediately aside this Prosciutto Sandwich with Arugula.
Prosciutto Sandwich with Arugula
Spread butter on both sides of a hinged baguette. Fill w/ scant 1/2 lb prosciutto. Top w/ 3 c arugula drizzled w/ bit of white truffle oil or olive oil. Slice the baguette into portions.
SERVE alongside the fig and melon salad.
Thank, Pugmama. I decided to make that site’s chicken satay tonight. It looked easy. The chicken skewers are in the oven and the peanut sauce is so good I have to attempt not to eat it all while waiting! Thanks for the site.
Thanks for the Mex-Tex site. I am really fond of this type of food and cooking!
Looks fantastic Liz. Hope I get some figs this year.
The figs in the salad are especially colorful——the ruby-red flesh covered by bright green skin.
Do you have a special variety you prefer among those on the market?
• Mission figs have dark purple skin and reddish-brown flesh. Missions are my favorites for cooking; I love their special intensity. These are the figs California is famous for.
• Brown Turkeys, a large southern fig, have brownish skin and pink flesh. They’re also grown in California.
• Royal Mediterraneans are green-skinned with a purple tinge. The flesh is a whitish pink.
• Calimyrnas (the California version of a variety called Smyrna) have green skins and ivory-colored flesh; they’re used for drying and eating out of hand.
• Kadota, White King, Everbearing, and Strawberry figs are other varieties that you may find at the market to cook and to eat out of hand.
I brought a Mission fig cutting from our tree in No CA. We had 2 huge ones and I love this fig. My little tree was destroyed by recent hail, but is now struggling back.
We also planted a Brown Turkey as it grows well in upstate SC. This one has taken off and I hope for some fruit this year.
Thanks for the review. I love all things fig.
I’m impressed.......you got the best figs actually growing in your own backyard.
If I lived next door, I’d bake you the bestest most wonderful pie in exchange for handful of your home-grown figs.
Beautiful....and I bet those branches would make wonderful twig wreaths.
Careful out there guys
‘Avocado hand’ is sending people to the ER because people don’t know how to cut their fruit
http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Avocado-hand-injury-ER-knife-surgery-11139493.php
This has been my favorite fig recipe for years. It uses dried Calimyrnas, and I’m not sure how it would do with others:
I’ve always been interested in this. Is it from your own trees, and how many trees do you have to tap to get 20 gallons?
Do you do this on your stove top?
Not quite that bad ;-)
In the past I always used Pennington’s ‘Food Values’, which in latter editions was Bowes and Church’s:
https://www.amazon.com/Pennington-Churchs-Values-Portions-Commonly/dp/B00N4HCJAU
There is probably something more up-to-date now, but this was always pretty exhaustive and also addressed a lot of commonly used prepared foods.
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