Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Simple things to make




You guys are so fancy with the stuff you make! I'm impressed!
The first picture is the one I should have posted last time. I really like this recipe, it's great since it's cold I don't need to worry about heating it. Good for the days when I work both jobs.
The second is the chocolate covered dried apricots rolled in pistachios, I have posted this before. Healthy and chocolate, win-win. (is too healthy)

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Grape Glaze

I randomly came across this recipe today that I had ripped from an issue of Cooking Light in June 2005! I was looking for some dinner inspiration and there it was! Again, sorry for the picture of meat for those of you that don't eat it...I forgot to take a picture of just the glaze. This was really good! Even Pat thought so!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Grape-Marinated Tofu Steaks


Tofu is a dinner staple in our household. Most people don't like tofu because they think it is tasteless, but it's all about the marinade and squeezing the water out of it first. If you squeeze effectively, the tofu takes on the flavor of whatever liquid you put it in afterward. I'll grant that the texture can be boring, but if you pan-sear it or fry it, it's quite good. Just ask the folks at your local Thai restaurant. Anyway, we marinated a block of tofu (cut in half) for two days in an all natural grape jelly based marinade that also had Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, and black pepper. We were going to use grape juice, but we couldn't find a small enough bottle at the grocery, so we found a jelly that didn't have a bunch of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup in it and rolled with that instead. It worked out. Once we finished searing the tofu off, we reduced the leftover marinade in the same pan for a kind of home made steak sauce (more like a glaze, really). We served it with NearEast brand rice with lentils, green beans, and King's Hawaiian rolls. Yum!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Homage to Kim



Kim made a version of this chicken salad for the sandwich challenge. We made a vegetarian (vegan, actually) version with Quorn cutlets and and Vegenaise. The grapes were enormous seedless black grapes, so we cut them down a bit—they're the purple-looking bits in the salad. We had only minced red onion, Vegenaise, the Quorn cutlets (diced), the grapes, and celery. No marjoram. It was awfully good, and we were surprised we'd never tried it before.

White Chocolate Grapes

So...these were supposed to be grapes, dipped in milk chocolate and then dipped in crushed nuts...Instead I used up a small amount of white chocolate I had and then nixed the nuts since I figured my family would object. So really this ended up being not exciting at all. It didn't taste all that interesting becuase it's grapes dipped in white chocolate. Maybe I'll try it the right way another day!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Turkeys Eat Grapes!

So we adopt a turkey every year through Farm Sanctuary, and today we got the card in the mail about the Turkey we adopted, Velma, and look what she likes to eat! Grapes!

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Something Real Simple...Like GRAPES

It's kind of an idea and a suggestion for this month. I figure you guys might all be making impressive Thanksgiving dishes that you'll want to share. So the rest of the month should be easy.

I'm all for making food simple, that's really the only way I can succeed in cooking! and that is why i like the cooking section in Real Simple magazine, because it often is very simple. I made this a few weeks ago and i liked it so much i bought all the stuff to make it again. I just forgot to take a picture. Try it. You'll like it! (i even made the pita chips too!) Couscous Salad with Grapes and Feta