We took a trip to Grandma and Tom’s cabin this weekend and had such a relaxing time.  I often think that my inspiration for cooking [and eating] comes from Grandma’s great food!  Every Christmas and Summer when I was a child my family would go over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house.  Every morning there would be hearty oatmeal, fluffy pancakes, or homemade muffins baking in the oven.  We’d always sit around the table and have dinner as a family.  Grandma always (and still does) serves salad, bread, entree and at least two sides with every meal.  Needless to say I would have my fair share.  The food is always delicious and cooked with the experience only Grandma can serve up.

I’m going to write about ribs Tom (Grandma’s husband) cooked a little later but I wanted to share first about the wheat crass cocktail Grandma whipped up for me one day.  I saw a pile of wheat-grass growing (along with the rest of the HUGE garden they  have) and asked what it was for.  Grandma proceeded to show me, with great delight I tried the concotion and enjoyed the grassy flavor.  Pure wheat-grass juice was a bit too strong, but when she added apples, carrots and cucumber it brightened it up.  I’ll admit it looks a little radioactive but, I’ll assure you, it’s healthy!  Here’s what she did:

Ingredients:

• Juicer (She said you really needed a special one made for wheat-grass.)
• Two or three large handfuls of freshly cut wheat-grass
• 1/2 apple, sliced
• 1 whole carrot, sliced
• 1/2 cucumber, sliced

Directions:

1. Add all ingredients to the juicer according to manufacturer’s instructions, pour into your cup, stir and ENJOY!

I hope you enjoy it!

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Seafood Recipes

RULE FOR SELECTING FISH.

If the gills are red, the eyes full, and the whole fish firm and

stiff, they are fresh and good; if, on the contrary, the gills are

pale, the eyes sunken, the flesh flabby, they are stale.



Cheesecake Recipes

BROILED PIG'S FEET

Thoroughly clean as many pig's feet as are
required, and split lengthwise in halves, tying them with a broad tape
so they will not open in cooking. Put in a saucepan with a seasoning of
parsley, thyme, bay leaf, allspice, carrots and onions, with sufficient
water to cover. Boil slowly until tender, and let them cool in the
liquor. Dip in the beaten yolks of eggs and warmed butter. Sprinkle with
salt and pepper and cover with bread crumbs seasoned with very finely
chopped shallot and parsley. Put on a gridiron over a clear fire and
broil until well and evenly browned. Unbind and arrange on a dish,
garnish with fried parsley and serve.

Recipes

In one of the latest in a recent string of strange decisions, the Food network decided to cancel Emeril Lagasse’s flagship program Emeril Live late last year.  I honestly don’t know what they’re thinking over in upper management there, but to simply let the personality that has given Food Network a vast piece of its overall popularity go seems like a very bad decision to me. Luckily, those of us who still have respect and admiration for chefs that actually cook, and are willing to share their knowledge with us have a haven on television in the Fine Living Network.

Most of you are probably aware that Fine Living picked up the contract for Molto Mario when talks with the network failed two years ago.  The same holds true for Emeril Live!  Which will now be carried on FLN every night of the week at 7:00pm e/p (or 6:00pm central, where I happen to be.) starting July 7th. We’re not talking re-runs here, either.  These are all new episodes of Emeril Live, and I’m glad that FLN has recognised that the viewing public isn’t always thrilled with the choices made by other networks!

Just as a little tidbit to whet your appetite, here’s a clip from the upcoming July 11th episode, titled “Emeril’s Farmers Market”

You can see more on the FLN Emeril Live Page, so feel free to check it out!

Just a note:  This is not a sponsored post or an advertisement.  The fine folks at 360i, the company that handles promotions for FLN contacted me to see if I would be interested in passing this along to you guys.  Since I feel that Emeril is someone worth the time to watch, I agreed happily!

(c) 2008 Cooking… by the seat of my Pants!. This feed contains copyrighted photographs and text from cookingbytheseatofmypants.com. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, at the aforementioned url, or at foodbuzz.com, the site you are viewing might be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact jerry[AT]cookingbytheseatofmypants[DOT]com.

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Thank you,

Shrimp Creole Crockpot

1 1/2 cups diced celery
1 1/4 cups chopped onion
3/4 cup chopped bell pepper
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (28 oz.) can chopped tomatoes
2 cloves minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
6 drops Tabasco (opt.)
1 pound shrimp - deveined & shelled

Combine all ingredients except shrimp. Cook 3 to 4 hours on high or 6 to 8 hours on low.

Add shrimp last hour of cooking. Serve over hot rice. Chicken or crawfish may be substituted for shrimp.

.
There you have it my lovelies. A photo remnant of the last tuna I will be consuming for a long, long time.

(Insert heaving sigh.)

The last vestiges of the meal are heating in the oven now...ready to be consumed. (With a bit of trepidation if you must know.) Savored, savory, satiation.

Yup.

Tuna is off the menu.

Pity really. It's delicious stuff.

But peaches! It is just about time that we must all face the facts that it's also heinously over fished (and badly fished at that) and way up there on the "for-goodness-sake-people! Really? Please-stop-demanding-this" list. Right?

Right.

So as my one-small-person act of the week, I have chosen to avoid it from here on out.

Oh tuna, I will miss you, but I cannot consume you. No, no, not at the cost of the oceans, the earth and my general health.

From now on, I will focus my pesce-energies on mackerel and sardines and all the mid-range sea creatures that aren't a danger to myself and my pretty planet.

I promise to be a good, eco-friendly girl.

So with this dish, (recipe lifted almost entirely from The Hostess, who served it to me last week, and then repeated for your pleasure) I say adieu and close my eyes and hope and hope and hope that others will stop eating tuna too. At least long enough for you to rebound and for fishermen to find a less wasteful/more humane way to ensnare you.

Swim on great tuna.

For you my peaches, try this (not entirely summery, but entirely delicious and fantastically satisfying) dish and taste the (bittersweet) joy.

And thank you for indulging me in my lil' bitty soap-box moment. Sometimes a girl just can't help but say something that weighs heavy...ya know?

2 ounces seared tuna (I brought mine home from a lovely and abundant dinner out), diced
1/2 pound whole wheat noodles, cooked and cooled
1/2 cup whole cream
2 teaspoons capers
2 tablespoons minced scallion
1/4 cup kalamata olives, sliced
1 cup assorted wild mushrooms (I reconstituted dried)
1 teaspoon minced fresh savory or thyme
1 tomato, sliced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
Enough rinsed grape leaves to line your baking dish
Salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Toss together the noodles, cream, capers, scallions, olives, mushrooms and savory. Season with salt and pepper.

In another bowl, toss together the olive oil, panko and Parmesan.

Lightly oil a medium sized (you'll have to eyeball this) oven-safe baking dish. Line with overlapping grape leaves (gaps are fine). Fill with the noodles. Top with sliced tomato then panko.

Bake until golden brown on top. About 30 minutes.

Slice in to wedges and serve.

© 2008 Fresh Approach Cooking

______________________________________

© 2008 Rachael at "Fresh Approach Cooking" www.freshcatering.blogspot.com This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, or at the aforementioned url, the site you are looking at is guilty of infringing upon terms of copyright. And generally cheesing me off.

Yes, I did just read Bottomfeeder: How To Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood. I urge you to check it out.

New data released in 2006 by the WWF, the global conservation organization, revealed that bluefin tuna has almost been fished out of some of the Mediterranean’s oldest fishing grounds.Catches around Spain’s Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean, for example, were down to just 15 per cent of what they were just a decade ago. Only 2,270 tonnes have been caught there in 2006, compared with 14,699 tonnes in 1995. - WWF

What's the difference between a fish and a piano? You can't tuna fish!

This Food Blog was written by guest blogger, Jennifer Graue from Opinioneater.
Check out her Food Blog at opinioneater.wordpress.com

We’ve all heard the sayings “You can’t judge a book by its cover” and “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” and most of us probably do a fairly good job at keeping that wisdom in mind when dealing with people.  So why are we so judgmental about fruit and vegetables?

Grocery stores and markets typically have only perfect specimens on display in the produce aisle because consumers don’t want to see ugly fruit.  But there’s plenty of blemished, bruised and deformed fruit and vegetables out there that, with the right preparation and recipes, taste just as good as the almost-too-perfect “pageant produce.”

These “seconds”, as they’re often called, aren’t always easy to find, but asking for them at a farmer’s market or a farm stand can save a lot of perfectly edible food from winding up on a compost heap and it can save you money if you’re willing to put in a little effort.

I’m fortunate enough to live around the corner from what locals call “The Apple Man.”  Every year between April and July he sells apples and pears out of his garage and I always buy at least a couple of seven kilo bags of apples from him each year, with the intention of eating most of them out of hand.  By the time I’ve worked my way, eating an apple a day, to the bottom of the bag, the last dozen apples have seen better days and I wind up turning those apples into applesauce.

This year, rather than making my applesauce out of first-rate apples, I asked The Apple Man for a bag of seconds.  I came home with a bag of apples and pears for just $2.50—a deep discount from the normal $10 price tag.

My first task with my ugly fruit was to make the applesauce.  I love having applesauce on hand.  It goes really well with a pork roast and I like to use it in baked goods as a substitute for some of the butter or oil which makes muffins and cakes healthier and keeps them incredibly moist.

I peeled, cored and quartered the apples and cut out the rotten spots (if you have a food mill, which I don’t, you can just cut out the bad spots and quarter the apples and cook them as is—skins, seeds and all).  I put the apples in a large stockpot with about 2cm of water in the bottom and brought them to a boil, then turned the heat down and let them cook slowly for about half an hour or so until they were mushy, stirring occasionally to make sure the apples didn’t burn and to break them up with the back of my spoon.  You can add sugar, but I usually don’t find it necessary.  If using a food mill, wait until the applesauce cools then pass it through the mill to get rid of the seeds and excess skin.  The applesauce will keep in the refrigerator for several days, or you can freeze it in small containers.

I wound up with two litres of applesauce and still had apples left which I used to make two apple walnut cakes and an apple slice.  With the eight pears that were in the bag, I used two of them in a pear clafouti and the rest went into pear chutney.  Not bad for just $2.50!

At a time when many of us are concerned about the rising cost of food, it’s worth remembering those sayings about appearances.  With a little effort, you can turn produce that’s inexpensive because it’s unattractive into food that’s lovely to behold and even better to eat.

Benjamin Christie's Australian Food, BBQ Recipes and Australian Recipes feature bush tucker ingredients like lemon myrtle and wattleseed. Check out recipes like shrimp on the barbie, anzac biscuits, lamingtons and banana bread. 

Food Service professionals will be interested in his chef blog as well as articles on menu planning, food photography, cooking kangaroo, menu engineering and food costing.

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I'll be joining Leigh Hudson from the Chefs Armoury at Restaurant 08 in Sydney where we shall be discussing the secrets of knife sharpening using Japanese waterstones.

This is the third year of Restaurant Sydney and will be held at the Royal Hall of Industries from Monday 11th - Tuesday 12th August 2008.

Restaurant 08 Sydney is the must attend  industry event, featuring over 160 suppliers giving visitors the opportunity to source the very best in regional produce, innovative new products, and services for their business.

If you havent registered for Restaurant 08, then register here.

Benjamin Christie's Australian Food, BBQ Recipes and Australian Recipes feature bush tucker ingredients like lemon myrtle and wattleseed. Check out recipes like shrimp on the barbie, anzac biscuits, lamingtons and banana bread. 

Food Service professionals will be interested in his chef blog as well as articles on menu planning, food photography, cooking kangaroo, menu engineering and food costing.

Food Advertising with Gourmet Ads