Best Dressed- Add some spice to your life

Jalapeño Ranch Dressing

Add some spice in your life!

What you need:

•  2 cloves of fresh minced garlic Garlic
•  Salt & pepper to taste
•  1/4 cup Italian Flat-leaf Parsley finely chopped
•  2 Tablespoons Fresh Chives Finley chopped
•  1 cup (Real) Mayonnaise
•  1/2 cup Sour Cream
•   Buttermilk
•   Worcestershire Sauce, To Taste
•    Fresh Dill (about 2 tsp)
•   ¼ teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
•    ¼ teaspoon Paprika
•    Tabasco (optional, To Taste)
•    1 tomatillo Peeled
•    1 jalapeño
•     2 tablespoons cilantro

     Mix all ingredients together, adding buttermilk slowly till you reach the desired consistency of your dressing. Place tomatillos, cilantro, and jalapeños in a food processor or blender. Blend until smooth, and then add to the other mixture.  Refrigerate and allow the flavors to blend for a few hours before serving.

This dressing is amazing on a wedge salad, break out the iceberg lettuce, crumble some bacon, and pour this over top! Ah-Mazing!

Feelin’ Crabby?

I have a new Food Editor gig for a new magazine out of the West Palm area! It’s an exciting adventure and the first issue was called Flavors! (check em out on FB!)

My recipe for Crab salad was on the cover, so I thought I would share it with you guys! It’s a light and easy recipe, check it out!

• Juice of 1/2 Fresh Lemon
• 1 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon Real Mayonnaise
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 24 ounces crabmeat, drained, picked over (if you can get fresh crab legs, Julianne the mean from the legs for presentation purposes)
• 1 head of Butter Lettuce
• Fresh Micro greens for garnish

Whisk the lemon, mustard, mayo, salt and pepper in a large bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in the oil. Add the crabmeat and toss gently to coat. Place in a bowl (or a martini glass if you want to have fun with it) on top of a butter lettuce leaf, and garnish with micro greens.

For a Special treat, top with some caviar.

iBlog

Greetings Traveler.

I have decided since I always have so much to say on many subjects other than food, I needed another outlet, so I started an offshoot of this food blog here on WordPress to express my never ending thoughts lol.. Please Follow me at:

http://iunfiltered.wordpress.com

Take a little stand

Around the corner from our neighborhood is a little self service farm stand. They have tomatoes, onions, sometimes, spinach, green beans, kale, etc. It’s a family Affair, Benedict is his name, farming is his game! His Cousins, and other relatives farm as well, and most attend farmers markets to sell their goods, but Benedict has his own little stand on a little corner of his property that for many years sat out in the middle of nowhere all by itself, but now.. the growth of this community has caught up to his location, which I am sure has increased his sales.. but has also increased his headaches. Often times you’ll see him throw up a sign threatening to close, or chewing people out for stealing veggies, vandalizing, or worse stealing the money. When his relatives do not sell out at the market they often times include their stuff at his stand, so you get quite the array of stuff when you catch it just right.

It’s a normal stop for us, if we are heading out to the grocery store, we swing by Benedict’s first to see what he has to offer that we can not only get cheaper, but its locally grown, no chemicals that threaten to eat our insides (always a plus), and its farmed right next door! Example: Red bell peppers half the size of his are $3.99 a pound in the stores, at this stand they are usually around $1.00 each and HUGE.

So Last week I found some green beans! I decided to play with some Asian style! Now, I forgot to measure anything, so these measurements are approx. but you can get the general idea! No more excuses for “easy” Frozen or canned green beans people, this is about as easy as it gets for FRESH goodness!

What you need:

• FRESH green beans, tips off
• 4 cloves FRESH garlic crushed
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp olive oil
• S&P to taste
• Sesame Seeds for garnish
• 2 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp real butter

What to do:

1. After taking the tips off your green beans place in a pot of boiling salted water and blanch for approx 2-3 minutes
2. In a Sautee pan add oils and butter and allow to heat up on medium heat, add garlic and sauté until light golden brown
3. Add Green beans and Sauté for approx 2-3 min then add the soy sauce.. Cook for another 3-4 minutes on low
4. Add Sesame seeds remove from heat and serve!
5. I like my Beans a bit still crunchy, you can cook them (or blanch them) a bit longer if you like them softer.

Variation:  Next time Im going to add some fresh grated ginger to the party!

 

Be my guest!

So around Christmas time I answered a call to be a guest blogger on one of my favorite blogs (see last blog entry). Today it was posted! YAY!!! Here my friends is the hot chocolate and cookie recipe you have been waiting for!

Check it out over at Rantings of an Amateur Chef!

http://rantingchef.com/2013/02/28/guest-post-hot-chocolate-and-cowgirl-cookies/#comment-10600

And the Wiener is…

Huge Thanks to Desiree from Of Moms and Monsters for nominating me for this award! I am honored that someone actually even reads my gibberish, much less think it’s inspired!! So read on down the line to find out some things about me you probably didn’t know, and catch onto a new blog to follow!

So, here are the rules:

1. Display the logo on your blog (CHECK)
2. Link back to the person who nominated you (CHECK)
3. State 7 things about yourself (CHECK!)
4. Nominated 15 other bloggers for the award (Well, 7)
5. Notify your nominees by linking to their blogs so they get notified by ping-back. (CHECK!)

The fact that you actually want to know 7 things about me is pretty inspiring all in itself! So let’s see what I got for ya!

#1- I am a wife and mom of 4 (5 if you include my husband)  Kassidie (16) Connor (10) Jesse (7) Kelsey (My Angel in Heaven & Kass’s twin) Greg (46)

#2- I am a chef and owner of a Gourmet food company, Called Gourmet Addictions, Inc.- in that food company is 2 DBA’s one being A Gourmet Affair Catering and the other being Salsa Addiction (www.yoursalsaaddiction.com) I started catering because of my love of feeding people. I am untrained and self taught but successful and damn good! (and it’s the only subject in my life I KNOW Im good at!) I also write reviews and recipe’s for other ventures.

#3- I have pet peeves about peoples laziness, excuses, and shopping carts. Don’t give me an excuse of why you can’t do something, because you can. Don’t tell me your too busy to do something, because I know damn well your not busier than I am (most people anyway!) and for the LOVE of all things holy, walk your shopping cart back to the coral! Don’t leave it in a parking space to blow around playing bumper cars and blocking people from parking there. k thx.

#4- Im a total gamer. I even met my husband (married 11 years) in a game, true story.

#5- I stake the claim of truly having the most amazing people in my life, the most amazing friends, family, and support system, they truly are the best around, you can’t claim it I did! On that note, you also can’t claim having the most awful, ignorant, stupid, drama filled, crazed lunatics in your life either, I claim this as well, go on, do the happy dance, all the lunatics are mine, Ill claim they all wanna be me and are complete stalkers, it’s how I get through my day. *le sigh*

#6- I get frustrated with eating well and working out and never losing weight. I have Blood Clots (DVT) all through my right leg, and even into my lungs (PE) and have major Thyroid issues. I live in a constant state of exhaustion, and pain. Welcome to my hell, again, don’t tell me you “can’t” cuz if I can, so can you.

#7- I’ll leave #7 to you, the reader! Ask me anything, Ill answer honestly, and probably sarcastically  Ready, set go, what do you wanna know?

Ok a little extra tid bit about me, Im not a big reader, so I do not even follow a ton of blogs, but the ones I do follow, I truly enjoy! Some of the blogs I read I just started reading literally this week or a couple of weeks ago, so I may not list them now but in the future they may be top on my list! So picking a few favs

1) Frugal Feeding a wonderful recipe blog that truly inspires me to create new things! Once, someone told me my food pictures were “too close up” making them look bad, Frugal Feeding takes all of his pics close up, so there! LOL and his pics are awesome, they make me feel like jumping right into the food!

2) Rantings of an Amateur Chef- I love the concept of this blog, he has guest bloggers so that you can cross post helping your blog and his, and it introduces me to new bloggers all the time! Matter of fact, I am a guest blogger coming soon on his blog Check him out!

3) Joscelyn’s Journey - I know this blogger personally. HEr blog is truly inspiring giving sometimes a bit of wit and humor to the truly tragic events of the recent years of her life. This blog is inspiring as she journey’s through Princess J’s diagnoses of hemimegalencephaly.

4) Going Dutch - This blog gives me a bit of culture in my un-cultured life. Her adventures in travel, food etc. inspire me to do more traveling, and give me a peek into another land.

5) Of Moms and Monsters Desiree is the one who nominated me for this award, and someone I am lucky enough to know personally, but she truly is a blog I love to read! Many people go through life feeling sorry for themselves, or take their challenges being depressed and always down. Desiree embraces her struggles living with not one but possibly 2 children with Autism. She tackles it with humor and fun! She is a self proclaimed nut case and loves life. Check her out!

6) Domestic Diva MD- With every recipe, there’s a story (usually about a bad date and men with no brain power) but I love reading this witty blog of dating adventures by this hot doctor chick who tends to add a recipe to the mix

7) Homemade Delish- Great recipe blog, of which I envy her whole page set up, and number of followers, so be one!

Going through the list I found I follow more blogs than I thought! These are probably my top 7 for now though, so be sure to check them out

Thanks for the award, carry on!

Best Dressed: Really, it has honey.

So as many of you know, I was the food editor for a local magazine. Recently the magazine when through some pretty dramatic changes, lots of drama, lots of chaos, and a new managing editor was brought in. I was called one day and told “I brought in my own people, a real food writer” (Cuz you know, Im fake.) So although I am writing for other magazines, I no longer write for that one. I do however, still get one each month in the mail, and shake my head (and ok laugh a little) every time I see one of the recipe’s from the “real writer” that has missing ingredients, or that just sounds awful! So maybe the guy can write, but recipe’s isn’t it. The last month he wrote up a “Honey Vinaigrette” well one of my last submissions was a Honey Lime dressing, so I automatically turn to it, thinking “this better not be mine!!” Lo and behold it wasn’t, it was completely different, and in the ingredients list? Not one drop of honey. Not one. So why honey in the title? Your guess is as good as mine, but to make up for it, here is my honey dressing, and you guessed it, it actually HAS honey! *gasp* 

Honey Lime Dressing for fruit

• 2 fresh Limes Juiced
• Pinch Kosher Salt
• Pinch of Freshly Ground White Pepper
• 1/4 Cup Good Quality Honey
• 1tsp Lime zest
• 4 tbs chopped fresh mint leaves 

 drizzle on fruit salad, or fold in some marshmallow fluff and cool whip and make a fruit dip!