This is my second most favorite tea sandwich, after the traditional Cucumber and Cream Cheese. I use bay shrimp and not prawns as the flavor is far more delicate. These would be great to add to any Holiday Tea, Ladies Lunch, or even to be used at the cocktail hour. When not making tea sandwiches I put this filling on crusty sour dough french bread – Yum! Read More
If you have never hosted a high tea before, now is the time to jump in with both feet and host one for your friends to help celebrate the upcoming holidays. I try to have a holiday luncheon for my girl friends each year, where we reminisce about all the good times and memories we are grateful for. It also gives us the opportunity to spend a minute or two on throwing away any of the negative vibes, and ensure they don’t roll over into the new year. My luncheon menu varies from year to year and Read More
This recipe is an adaptation of Geoffrey Zakarian’s Smashed Cucumber and Green Apple Salad.Geoffrey is a co-host on The Kitchen on Food Network on Saturday mornings, as well as being an Iron Chef. Recently he prepared a pesto-rubbed baked salmon along with his Smashed Cucumber and Green Apple Salad. The salad looked really good and appeared to be Whole30 Compliant, so I made a batch of it the same day. I ended up taking this salad as a side dish for lunch several times the following week and some days I added cut up chicken and made it an entrée portion instead. Frankly, I was surprised Read More
There must be hundreds of turkey soup recipes floating out there to help use up your leftovers from Thanksgiving. This is the first time I ever made by own turkey stock, as I usually just use a carton of chicken broth. I was amazed at how prominent the turkey flavor was by making it from scratch. It has to cook for about 4 hours, so it takes time, but the prep work itself, Read More
One holiday down, and two to go before 2014 comes to an end – the year has certainly gone by very quickly! Lots of holiday parties in the next month, so canapes and appetizers will be at the top of my list of things to prepare. These stuffed mushrooms are quite easy to make and have a slight piquant tangy flavor to them as evidenced from the combo of goat cheese and balsamic vinegar reduction. I served them on Thanksgiving and got two thumbs up from my 5-year-old great-niece Lily – that makes this appetizer a winner as far as I am concerned! Read More
Here is a perfect canape to serve on Thanksgiving while you wait for the turkey to finish cooking. You don’t really want heavy canapes/appetizers as you want everyone to enjoy your turkey with all the trimmings that you have slaved over all day.
Make the sugared cranberries right after you put the turkey in the oven, as the cranberries will need to set/dry for about 3 hours. Assemble the canapes about an hour before you serve dinner. Open the oven door and smell your delicious turkey; place the canapes on a white platter and serve to guests. Sit, eat, sip glass of wine/champagne and you are done. Let someone else serve the dinner and do the dishes – after all you have done enough today! Read More
Photo courtesy of Google
Today is Day 30 for me. That is if I had stayed on the program. But about 10 days ago I attended an after work party and had a glass of champagne and a few appetizers. Nothing big, just a couple stuffed mushrooms, some brie and baguette slices, a couple or three deviled eggs, and a treat that is named “Crispy Truffles” which were these amazing balls of mashed potatoes with bits of chives and truffle, which are then deep-fried and served with a creamy ranch-style sauce – Yum! And two pieces of pizza. But that was it. Seriously.
I didn’t feel very good the next day, BUT I didn’t gain any weight, so lucky me – or so I thought. Since I didn’t gain any weight and I had gone off program, I decided to extend my good fortune and stay off the diet the next day, as after all it was Halloween. So now I added eating sugar – just a few candies since it was a “holiday” and I was being festive at work. Well maybe it was more like a few handfuls since it was candy corn, and who can resist candy corn on Halloween? The next day was the weekend and of course I rationalized since I had already messed up for two days, I might as well live it up over the weekend and go back on program on Monday. Read More
Coming up with new ideas for breakfast on Whole30 isn’t always easy. I have learned a big part of the success on this program is to plan, plan, plan. This breakfast is easy to prep (about 5 minutes), and takes less than 10 minutes to cook. Couldn’t be easier on a busy morning while you get ready for work. Read More
Saturday was a typical day of running around doing chores that included an early morning WW meeting, a mani/pedi appointment, car wash, grocery shopping for next week’s Whole30 meals, drop off at the cleaners, shop for a birthday gift, go home and change clothes and leave for dinner downtown before heading to see the musical Kinky Boots.
I had breakfast covered (sweet potato hash browns and bacon) and dinner was at a Japanese restaurant where I had Beef marinated in Coconut Milk. But lunch was something else again as I wouldn’t be home till after 3pm and I clearly needed to avoid running into a fast food place if I was starving.
But thanks to Larabar’s Cherry Pie bar, I was able to stay compliant while on the go. I was pleasantly surprised at how good these bars actually are, as they are a first for me. Read More
I admit I really like mayonnaise, but it HAS to be Best Foods or else. When I found out I can’t have my mayonnaise as it contains sugar and I needed to make the homemade paleo stuff to be Whole30 compliant, well……hmmm…..not too happy. But I promised to follow the program as strictly as possible for 30 days so I went online and tried making a few of the Whole30, paleo mayonnaise. But they didn’t do well. I tried a recipe that said to use the blender – but all I got was very thin salad dressing and it tasted way to0 strong of olives. The second recipe I tried using a food processor and that one curdled and was not fixable even though there were instructions on how to salvage it when the mayo turns ugly, (mine was uglier than Frankenstein).
Then this morning I was watching the movie Julie and Julia (the one about Julia Child with Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci). Towards the middle of the movie there is Julia memorializing the beauty of homemade mayonnaise and I thought why not see how I can adapt Julia Child’s recipe – that ought to be a good one. To my surprise, Julia’s recipe is the exact same recipe all the Paleo people are promoting. Julia was obviously way ahead of her time and was making Paleo and healthy recipes without even realizing it. Who knew!
I got out my copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and followed Julia’s recipe precisely, including pouring the olive oil by droplets, and not thin streams of olive oil – yes you read that correctly, DROPLETS. Course she also encourages you to make this a hand-beaten sauce, but does allow for the use of the electric mixer if you really have to – and I whipped out my Kitchen Aid mixer so quickly Julia would have been impressed at the speed. When adding the olive oil I measured out my oil into 3 separate sessions, and scraped and folded the mayonnaise before starting to add droplets of the next 1/2 cup. Here is a quick clip from the movie when Julia has mastered the art of chopping onions among other things while taking cooking lessons at Le Cordon Bleu.
3 egg yolks
1 Tbl lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1-1/2 cups of olive oil (1 cup was original olive oil, and 1/2 cup extra light olive oil)
Warm your metal mixing bowl under warm water and then dry throughly. Add the egg yolks and let them sit in the bowl for about 5 minutes before beating them for 1 to 2 minutes until they are thick and lemon colored.
Add the lemon juice (or wine vinegar if you prefer), salt, and dry mustard. Beat for 30 seconds more.
The egg yolks are ready for you to add the oil, drop by drop, until the sauce has thickened. I set my mixer at medium speed and measured out 1/2 cup at a time and then poured it in very, very, slowly. Then I would stop the mixer and scrape the sides and fold the bottom sauce into the top, before starting to pour the next batch of olive oil. Julia says “After 1/2 cup of oil has been incorporated, the sauce will thicken into a very heavy cream and the crisis is over.” She was right.
I had created home-made mayonnaise AND it tasted really GOOD. Ran over to my sister’s house and made her try it, and she said, “Yep it tastes like mayonnaise!” And here I thought getting healthy would be difficult – just not so!
Homemade mayonnaise
Yield: 2 to 2-1/2 cups of mayonnaise
canapesandchocolate.com 