November 23rd, 2009 | Author:
Teresa
Lately I’ve been seeing “goji berries” popping up in the stores in the natural food sections.
Ho-Hum
Of course these are all the rage right now.
Goji berries might be good for what ails you
Also known as the “wolfberry and the “matrimony vine,” goji berries are the fruit of a woody perennial from China. They’ve been a mainstay of traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years.
As they say, go read the rest. You shouldn’t be surprised to see China being mentioned prominently. According to those who are into all this stuff, China is the place of miracles. If we just did everything they did in old Chinese medicine, we’d all live to be 1001 at least.
Makes me tired.
However, the Whole Foods store where I shop sells Dark chocolate covered Goji Berries. They are very very good. They taste like dark chocolate covered raisins. Of course if they didn’t have the chocolate, I would never have bothered to buy them. Now I’ll have to wonder if I am getting the health benefits from the berries or the chocolate… what a dilemma!
November 19th, 2009 | Author:
Teresa
So I was at the grocery store today to pick up a few odds and ends. I do one “large” scale grocery run on Sunday morning, then stop in 1 or 2 times during the week to pick up any extras I may need. (please note, when I say “large” I would be laughed out of the room by any self respecting shopper with 2-3 carts of food every week. It is – after all – only my husband and myself here and we don’t eat that much). Today’s little excursion included a search for capers.
I have no idea why, but I always have a hard time finding capers in the store. I know which aisle the stockers use. I even know the approximate location within said aisle. Yet the few times a year when I want to grab a jar, it takes me over 5 minutes to find them.
They blend.
They are always located with the pickles and olives. The jars are small. For some reason I tend to look right past them. The longer I look, the less I see them. The more irritated I become. It gets to the point that I must make myself start at the top shelf and specifically look at each and every jar until I finally see them.
Of course I know they were hiding behind jars of olives the first 15 times I looked, yet when I have to make the laborious effort to look at every jar, they sudden sneak out of hiding and are sitting on the shelf as if they’ve been there all along.
With all the new techno-gadgetry out there, I think we need to come up with little tags for these hard to find items. The homing signal can be coded into your cell phone. As you waive the phone over the face of the shelves, it rings when it goes directly past the item you are looking for. Think how much time it would save.
Of course I could always not buy capers. Just leave them on the shelf. But I do like them in certain dishes. At least I have a new jar as of today. I don’t have to worry about it for a while. In the meantime, I should “write an app for that”. Heh.
November 18th, 2009 | Author:
Teresa
If you have gmail and you are at a loss for something to cook, just go to your spam folder…
Since you have to go to all the trouble of looking through the junk mail to be sure gmail didn’t grab a “real” email, Google has decided to make it a two for one stop. They very helpfully serve up spam recipes in addition to the spam email.
For instance google currently believes I might like to make Spam Breakfast Burritos. Yes they give you a link and everything.
I find that so very thoughtful. Google not wanting me to go hungry…
Of course I’m sure if I didn’t have “ad bloc plus” running on my browser, there would also be ads to help me lose all the weight I’d gain by eating so much spam…
Interesting business they have going on.
November 16th, 2009 | Author:
Teresa
I found a recipe for Lemon Cheesecake bars on the Chicago Tribune site tonight. I love lemon and I love cheesecake – although sadly if I eat too much cheesecake I end up with a migraine. I may have to make these one day though. They’re almost too good to pass up! I’m going to reprint the recipe here, because we all know that newspaper articles soon disappear…
Lemon ripple cheesecake bars
Prep: 20 minutes Cook: 1 hour Makes: 16 bars
From a recipe by cookbook author Elinor Klivans
Crust:
1 cup flour
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 stick (½ cup) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces, chilled
Filling:
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cornstarch
½ cup cold water
2 large egg yolks
1 ¾ cups sugar
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 ¼ pounds cream cheese, at room temperature
2 tablespoons flour
3 large eggs, at room temperature
¼ cup sour cream, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
Fresh berries, optional
For crust, heat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 9-inch square nonstick baking pan. Pulse the flour, sugar, lemon zest and salt in a food processor. Add butter; pulse until a soft, crumbly dough forms. Press dough evenly over the bottom and 1/2 inch up the sides of the pan. Bake until golden, about 20 minutes.
For filling, dissolve the cornstarch in the cold water in a small bowl. Whisk the yolks with 3/4 cup of the sugar and the lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Whisk in the cornstarch mixture; cook over medium heat, whisking, until sugar dissolves and mixture is hot, about 4 minutes. Raise heat to medium-high; heat to a boil, whisking constantly. Cook until mixture is thick and glossy, 1 minute. Strain into a heatproof bowl. Stir in lemon zest. Let cool.
Beat cream cheese with remaining 1 cup sugar in a large bowl with electric mixer until smooth. Beat in the flour until blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well between additions. Add sour cream and vanilla; beat until batter is smooth. Pour cream cheese batter over the crust; smooth with a spatula. Place lemon mixture in dollops on the cheesecake batter; carefully swirl it into the batter using the tip of a knife or a skewer.
Bake until golden around edges and just set, 40-45 minutes. Run a knife around edges to loosen the cheesecake. Cool on a wire rack 1 hour; refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Cut into bars; garnish with berries.
I’ll leave it to you to go to the site and find out all the low down details of how bad it is for your health. I think we all know this will never be health food. But it looks really good.
Happy Eating.
November 12th, 2009 | Author:
Teresa
I kept meaning to get over here and post, but events overwhelmed me. Too much work and not enough down time. Now the holidays are fast approaching. I can hardly believe Thanksgiving is nearly here! Where did the time go?!?!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year – bar none! All that is expected is food. I can do that. If you don’t have to work, it’s the perfect long weekend. Of course those who work retail very likely loathe Black Friday. (I never go out if I can help it). But Thanksgiving itself is a real holiday in my world.
Back to that food. I used to do a turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes, green veggie, rolls, 3 pies, etc. That’s a bit of overkill with only my husband and myself to feed. This year the turkey dinner will be done at Christmas when the kids will be visiting. My kids have always loved my turkey and dressing. It is something that surprised me because I fully expected them to hate it (kids tend to dislike most everything their parents think they should like). Yet love it they do. Especially the dressing part. Thank heaven or they would have starved. heh.
The best part was always our dog. After year one – she was ready for Thanksgiving for the next 16 years. She LOVED the giblets. I’d cook them up on the stovetop, chop them and let her have that part. She would wait all day, sitting in the kitchen watching me bake the pies, boil the sweet potatoes, and all the other 1001 things that go into Thanksgiving dinner. She was so patient.
I still miss her.
Now I need to contemplate what food I should cook for my husband and myself for that extra special holiday.
Hmmm… decisions.
Now off to finish some work before bed. But I shall return (far sooner than past blogging indicates). I now have a schedule! I will be organized. Or not. We’ll see.
Nibbles at the Table