Relax with a strawberry limoncello sparkler. Everyone goes on about how wonderful limoncello is, but the one time I had it, it tasted like cough syrup. I must have purchased a cheap brand or something. Does anyone have a great brand of limoncello to recommend?
We all need to eat more vegetables. Even the vegetarians I know complain that they don't eat enough vegetables. No one can eat enough, but we all know that we should.
Vegetable benefits
Everybody knows that vegetables have nutrients. Important nutrients that keep you healthy and active. But a lot of people do not fully appreciate the role of fiber in their diet. Vegetables are a great way to get fiber, both soluble and insoluble.
This week’s Halloween post is a review of a few wonderful Halloween craft and recipe books that Wood Sprite and I have been exploring. All of these are great books, depending on what you want to use them for.
Granted, pumpkin spice everything is everywhere this time of year. But this is also a great time to explore all the possibilities of the lovely orange squash we know as the pumpkin.
I have already discussed the issue of making pumpkin things from scratch. You have to find the right kind of pumpkin, bake it for a long time, then scoop it out of the shell. At the end you're left with something which, in my opinion, is indistinguishable from canned pumpkin puree. So don't feel bad about cooking with canned pumpkin. You're saving yourself a lot of trouble!
One great way to combat the high price of meat is to buy it in mega-packs and freeze it for later. The Safeway where I shop sells "Extreme Value Packs" with pretty good cuts of meat for at least half the cost per pound of buying those same cuts in a smaller package. The down side being that you have to purchase several pounds of (say) ribeye steak at once. Unless you have a large family or are hosting a big party, you will probably need to freeze a lot of it in order to avoid letting it go to waste.
There are a lot of reasons why you might want to make shredded chicken. It is a great stuffing for tacos and burritos, can be used as a salad topping, added to soup, quesadilla filling - once you start thinking about how you can use shredded chicken, you can come up with a ton of uses.
This year Starbucks started the holiday creep by launching their Pumpkin Spice Lattes early, mid-September, when much of the country happened to be gripped by a heat wave. THANKS STARBUCKS. I love your PSLs (as those-in-the-know call them) but that's the same nonsense that gets us Valentine's Day stuff for sale in November, and Easter stuff for sale in December. (I have witnessed both of these things with my own eyes.)
We are definitely making these fun pizza boats from Free Homeschool Deals this week. Pizza and broccoli are Wood Sprite’s favorite foods and I think she’ll love these.
With the cost of food constantly rising, I'm always on the lookout for what to do with cheaper cuts of meat. I have often lingered over flank steak at the store - it's so much cheaper than other forms of whole beef! But the one time I tried cooking it at home, I basically ended up trying to eat a triangular wad of shoe leather.
But I am determined to give it another shot, so I'm reading up on it first.
Every few years one of the major fast food chains pays lip service to the idea of providing healthier foods. It never lasts, because no one cares. The problem isn't that Burger King's food is unhealthy. The problem is that we really want to eat Burger King food. And when I say "we really want to eat Burger King food," I'm not talking about salads and low-fat fries.
Remember the disastrous McDonald's experiment with salads that you shake up in a plastic cup? That was an embarrassment to all concerned.
