March 31, 2008Last chance soup day?I know some of you have said the weather doesn't have to be cold for you to get in the mood for soup. But for me, there's just no better soup day than a cold, wet, dreary day -- kinda like today! March 28, 2008Photo of the Week!Our tantalizing food photo of the week was submitted by blog reader Sean, who wrote: "This is how I like to eat my Lox. In this version of the Lox I have a toasted bagel, cream cheese, capers and smoked salmon, of course. Then I add a little red onion, Tabasco, boiled egg and garnished with dill. Before I put everything together I sprinkle lemon on the salmon." Yummelicious. To see the Fridge Magnet's fine collection of food photos, hit the Flickr site. Have a tasty weekend! 
Do you like biscuits? Who doesn't!?
Some would say that if you don't like biscuits, you just aren't a true Southerner. March 27, 2008Garden, Part IIThanks to everyone for their great garden tips following yesterday's blog entry! -- Don't plant too early. My next question has to do with controlling pests of the smaller variety. I know bugs can be a big problem with a home garden, but I don't want to use any harsh chemicals. If possible, I'd love to be able to use organic methods. Does anyone have any suggestions on that front? Conveniently, I just received a big, beautiful cookbook in my mailbox called "Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Recipes from a Modern Kitchen Garden" by Jeanne Kelley. I'll attach a recipe after the jump. March 26, 2008How does your garden grow?
I can't believe it's taken me so long. As tempted as I am to go whole hog, planting row after row of tomatoes, green beans, squash and peppers, I think I had better start small this year. So I plan to spend this weekend tilling up a small square in the corner of my yard -- a patch just big enough for a beginner. After my family relocated to Virginia from Colorado in the early 1980s, my parents always had a garden in the back yard. It was barely half the size of my grandparents' garden, but it still turned out all of the veggies I mentioned above, along with spring onions, asparagus, corn, lettuce greens and much more. My father has a green thumb. When he ran out of space in his own backyard garden, he borrowed a big plot on a friend's farm and planted enough green beans to feed five families for a year. I doubt if I'll ever get to that point of infatuation, but I know I have it in my blood to at least grow a few Better Boys. In light of the tanking economy and the burgeoning slow food movement, I figure it'll save money and help the environment if I can do at least a portion of my produce shopping in my own backyard. How many of my faithful blog readers out there are gardeners as well as foodies? What are your favorite vegetables to grow? If you've got any tips to share with a beginner, bring them on. March 25, 2008Putting on the Dog
If you've been reading Nona Nelson's blog on Roanoke.com, the Happy Wag, you've already heard about "Putting on the Dog," a fundraiser for the St. Francis of the Assisi service dog foundation. But I've got something Nona doesn't haaaaave: the menu! That's right, this is what happens when seven chefs, some from competing restaurants in Roanoke, team up to create one fabulous meal: blackened beef tenderloin with blue cheese mousse, a duck proscuitto and roasted corn relish salad, she crab bisque, fois gras brioche-stuffed quail and much more. Putting on the Dog happens at the Roanoke Country Club on Thursday, April 17. Tickets are $150 per person or $1500 per table (seats 8) and includes the seven-course meal, complete with South African wine pairings. Chef Brett McKee (pictured above) of the Oak Steakhouse in Charleston, S.C. is kind of the star of the culinary show. The Roanoke College graduate is fixing tournados of filet mignon with rosemary-Parmesan potato gratin, sweet corn custard and black truffle demi-glace as the main course. But several very talented Virginia chefs will also be hard at work in the kitchen, including Tony Pope (who is making the quail), Brian Murtagh of the Roanoke Country Club (making apricot sorbet) and Chad Scott of 202 Market, who is planning to prepare a dessert of compressed apple with saffron air and smoked caramel. March 24, 2008Eggcellent idea!
It's another one of those National Food Days. Except this one makes a whole lot of sense: It's National Egg Salad Week! What else are you going to do with all those leftover hard-boiled eggs you dyed for Easter? When I was a kid, I got a hard-boiled egg in my lunch every day for a week after Easter. And I dutifully peeled it, sprinkled salt on it and ate it along with my sandwich. But I'll bet it would've been a whole lot tastier blended with mayonnaise and salt and papper. Better yet, why not spice up your salad a little bit with curry powder or horseradish? I've attached three egg salad recipes below the jump. One is for old-fashioned egg salad, one for curried egg salad and one for bacon-horseradish egg salad. How do you jazz up your egg salad? KGC: Finger-Lickin' Good (for you)?Not long after switching cooking oils for a trans fat-free fried chicken product, Kentucky Fried Chicken says it is launching a new product for a whole new image: Kentucky Grilled Chicken. March 21, 2008Photo of the Week!The photo of the week was submitted by blog reader Kat (a.k.a. The Boss). She rubbed this salmon with a mixture of French salts, then grilled it slowly on a cedar plank. "We first heated the pan and used pork fat as our oil," she wrote. "Then I browned some garlic in that and tossed the spinach in. After seasoning with some salt, the finishing touch was juice from half a lemon. The tartness made everything taste bright and fresh." Do you have a beautiful food picture? If so, submit it to my Flickr group or e-mail me at Lindsey.nair@Roanoke.com. Have a great weekend! 
Hashing it out
A recent blog posting about corned beef had one reader asking whether anyone out there had a time-tested recipe for corned beef hash. March 20, 2008And the winner is...I would like to award this week's free cookbook, "The Only Bake Sale Cookbook You'll Ever Need" by Laurie Goldrich Wolf and Pam Abrams, to blog reader Rebecca! As usual, you all made it incredibly difficult to choose a winner. In case you missed it, here's Rebecca's poignant comment about her dad: My best 'peanut-related food experience' would be Every Day With My Dad! My dad was a peanut addict! His favorite food was anything with peanuts or peanut butter. (I even got him to love Thai food because of the peanuts) He always had a can of Virginia Diner peanuts by his 'chair' and ended every day of his life with saltines and peanut butter. I always told my husband and kids that I would never worry about dad's health as long as he was still eating peanut butter and saltines before bedtime. Dad died in July of 2005 after a four month battle with stomach cancer. He ate those saltines and peanut butter until just a week before his death! Dad was a Baptist preacher who said even though it wasn't biblical, he knew that the streets of heaven were paved with peanuts, not gold. Thanks, Rebecca! E-mail me your address at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com and I'll put this book in the mail. Here's one last peanutty recipe from the cookbook before we move on to less nutty topics: March 19, 2008Today's the deadline!
5 p.m. today is the deadline to enter to win the latest free cookbook on the Fridge Magnet blog. How many licks...?
Well, after I received a press package from the Tootsie Roll company, a few of us back in the Features department reminisced about that commercial. Of course, in typical Features style, the conversation quickly veered off course to why owls would know how many licks it takes, if owls even have tongues, that owls usually eat mice and then...well, I'll just stop there. Back on subject, the Tootsie Roll folks have rolled out a new product called Tootsie Drops. The drops are basically miniature versions of a Tootsie Roll Pop except without the schtick...er, stick! The round, lozenge-sized hard candies have a tiny Tootsie Roll center and come in pouches with about 20 candies per pouch. March 18, 2008Easter's mystery meat
No, I'm not talking about tongue. Although, given the wide variety of meats that families choose to serve at their Easter table, I suppose we could be talking tongue. My Easter plans include a visit home to the Alleghany Highlands for some quality time with mom and dad. Mom and I are going to have a nice dinner together on Saturday night and crack open a bottle of wine. While chatting on the telephone about what we wanted to cook for dinner, Mom commented that "You can get away with cooking just about any meat at Easter -- lamb, ham, turkey, chicken, beef," etc. If I had to put money on it, I'd say most families probably serve lamb or ham. My maternal grandmother is a HUGE fan of lamb, and I can also remember Dad's mother fixing a roast leg of lamb and serving it with mint jelly. Although Easter is a Christian holiday, they say lamb at Easter goes back to the first Passover of the Jewish people. Then, the lamb was sacrificed, roasted and eaten in hopes that the angel of God would pass over their homes. The reason ham is popular in the United States is equally fascinating to me. March 17, 2008A lucky find
She was in her grocery store in Spartanburg, South Carolina looking for the ingredients she would need to make a cake she'd found a recipe for in her local paper. Kim's a sucker for anything key lime, so when she saw the recipe for Key Lime Cake, she was all over it. Since it actually turns out green in color, it also seemed like an appropriate treat to make for her co-workers just before St. Patty's Day and Easter. But Kim had a question. She couldn't find key lime juice at her store and wanted to know if I thought she could just use lime juice instead. March 14, 2008Peanut month recipe...and a free cookbook!
It's that time again, folks -- time to give away a free cookbook to one lucky blog reader! Continue reading "Peanut month recipe...and a free cookbook!" » Let's share food photos!
Feast your eyes on this beautiful rare, grilled tuna. This photo was submitted by blog reader Sean for my new feature, the Friday photo of the week! Since I started soliciting your food photos, I've received nearly 20 tantalizing pics. They range from Rich's bacon-wrapped wild turkey breast to Nona's famous banana pudding to Carrie's colorful beef cacciatore. Because I can't feature them all on the blog, I've decided to start a group on the photo sharing Web site Flickr. If you want to see all the photos, all you have to do is go here. If you'd like to join in the fun and add your own photos to the group, all you have to do is create a Flickr account and follow the directions from there. If you need any help, please feel free to let me know! Those of you who would rather not mess with creating a new account but still want to send food photos are welcome to e-mail them directly to me at lindsey.nair@roanoke.com. Of course, if you can also submit your recipe to the blog, that would make this feature even better! March 13, 2008Help out local chefs!In case you're still looking for an exciting outing tomorrow night, here's an idea. This event benefits the Southwestern chapter of the American Culinary Federation: 
March 12, 2008Corned beef from the vault
Every year about this time, I start thinking about my dear Grandma Nair stabbing holes in the corned beef roast and stuffing them with whole garlic cloves. Mmmm, I can just picture the steaming slices of corned beef beside a pile of cabbage and potatoes. For a good-looking corned beef recipe, check out the Meal Planner in this coming Sunday's Extra section. Meal Planner guru Susan Nicholson has a tasty honey-mustard glazed corned beef recipe that looks like a winner. Also, in case you missed it, we published a few more Irish recipes in the Extra section today. They are for Irish Beef Stew, Dublin Coddle (a layered dish of sausage, cabbage and onions with bacon) and Irish Pound Cake. That pound cake recipe looks like it'll actually turn out a 3-pound cake. It calls for golden raisins, dried currants, dried cherries, chopped almonds and a brushing with Irish whiskey when it comes out of the oven. If you missed those, you can still check them out here. Just look to the left of the page under my picture. Does your family eat anything special for St. Patrick's Day? March 11, 2008More likely to eat green?Tomorrow's Front Burner column is about two local restaurants that have made an effort to be more environmentally friendly. March 10, 2008Layers of loveHubby had a stressful week last week, and since I wanted to cheer him up this weekend and make something he's been requesting for some time, I had to bring out the big, red lasagna pan and go to work. If you're like me, every time you make lasagna, you realize anew what a pain in the keister it can be. It's not that it's difficult, it's just time-consuming. I'm still relatively new to lasagna making, as well. I use my mother's old time-tested recipe, but when I forget to actually look at the old time-tested recipe before leaving for the grocery store, I forget little things such as...oh, the fact that I'm supposed to have an entire pound of mozzerella rather than just an 8-ounce package. Good thing I had a package of cheddar/monterey jack blend. The time came for a little improvisation. As is typical on some Sunday afternoons, I also had some food supply maintenance issues to take care of -- in this case, I still had that chicken carcass to boil down into stock. 
March 7, 2008The roasted chicken comes full circle
I bought a $5 roaster at the grocery store, rubbed it down inside and out with butter, seasoned it with Canadian chicken seasoning, rosemary and a little salt and pepper and roasted it until it was juicy on the inside and browned on the outside. We dined on roasted chicken, fresh asparagus and a side salad. On Wednesday, I gave the carcass a near-thorough picking. Meanwhile, I thawed out my cube of frozen chicken stock on the stove. I made a roux from butter and flour, then whisked in my stock. I added sauteed onions, celery and garlic along with my cooked chicken pieces. It thickened. I added a little milk to make it creamier. I let it simmer. I added a half-bag of egg noodles and let it simmer away on the stove until the hubby came home. We dined on the thick, stewy chicken and noodles for dinner. On Thursday, I had leftover chicken and noodles in my lunch. Tomorrow, I'm going to get out the remaining carcass, submerge it in a pot of water on the stove with some onion, carrot and celery and simmer for several hours until I've got a nice, rich stock. On Sunday, I'll have a gallon of frozen, homemade chicken stock in the freezer. This is the beauty of when the roasted chicken comes full circle. Have a great weekend! March 6, 2008Pic of the weekWelcome to a new Fridge Magnet feature, the Pic of the Week. 
March 5, 2008Mission: Impossible?
Of course, anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that even though the equation is a simple one to understand, it can be one of the most difficult things to carry out. Abstaining from overeating can be just as difficult for some as abstaining from alcohol is for an alcoholic. Fortunately for me, I am not an alcoholic or a compulsive overeater. But I do love food and I do manage to talk myself out of going to the gym on more occasions than I'd like to admit. Result: I am nowhere near ready to put on a bathing suit. I don't even want to put on a bathing suit in my imagination. Because it's my job to eat good food, I refuse to go on some strict diet. Instead, I've decided to stick with a regular gym routine and be smarter about what I put in my mouth when I am not sampling a dish for my blog or my column. March 4, 2008Sucker and puckerWhat will they think of next? I'm not sure I really want to know.  New chef, new recipes
Look good while cooking
Photo source: www.maverydesigns.com March 3, 2008Food and wine eventLooking to treat yourself and usher in the weekend a little early this Thursday? |
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