Elementary Chef

Ever had a pasta salad at a restaurant or elsewhere that seems not to taste like anything much?

A big mistake people make when they’re cooking the pasta is in forgetting to season it. You really do need that salt in the cooking water ;>) Depending on what kind of salad I’m making, I add a little garlic or onion powder, Mrs.Dash or freshly-ground pepper to the drained pasta while it’s still hot, as well. This also helps soak up any water that didn’t drain away.

If you’re using a salad dressing as opposed to mayonnaise, try adding half the dressing while the pasta cools. This won’t work with mayonnaise, since the heat of the dish will curdle your mayo, but it’s a good idea otherwise, especially if you’re making your salad the night before. Save the other half of the dressing to add just before serving.

Pasta tends to suck up and cancel out dressings, and that extra bit of attention can make a world of difference!

pasta, salads

Christine Torres at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea has been working all day to round up some scary and scrummy recipes for us all today, and the Carnival of the Recipes is now up for your viewing pleasure. Be sure and leave her a comment to let her know her hard work is much appreciated.

Christine is the owner of CoffeeWorks Design, which offers creative, professional, affordable Web sites for small businesses who want a SUCCESSFUL internet presence. (View some of the work the company has done here.)

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by RDoctor Medical. (Send in your healthy recipes for the holidays!) Send your recipes or links to recipe.carnival@gmail.com by noon CST on Saturday. If you’re interested in hosting a future carnival send a message to the same address with the word host in the subject line. For a line-up of future Carnivals , visit our Carnival of the Recipes page on Blog Carnival. You can also review all past Carnival of the Recipes there too.

Sincerely,
Shawn Lea
http://everythingandnothing.typepad.com

Even though I’ve been baking pies for four decades, I’ve been known to serve a “boughten� pie, or bake a frozen one on occasion. It’s true that piecrust is more persnickety than cake batter, and does not respond well to rough treatment or too much handling. If you can master the art of a good piecrust, you’ll be rewarded with a far superior product than anything you can buy at any stage of preparation.

For some unknown reason, it always seems that home cooks are better at one or the other; cakes or pies, but not both. My mother was a superb pie person, my aunt turned out wonderful cakes. We could always tell who made what at family dinners. (more…)

If you’re hosting a dinner or any kind of celebration, why not show off a little with a make-it-yourself dessert bar? These look more complicated than they are, and can serve the dual purpose of satisfying everybody, if your friends have diverse tastes or dietary needs. Mix and match ingredients according to the size of the group.

What You Need:

Plain cookies or pound cake (cut in bite-size pieces)

Fresh fruit - pineapple, melon, pear slices, mandarin orange or tangerine sections, strawberries, seedless grapes, etc. (Avoid apples as they will turn brown, and berries that are too small)

Dips - Dipping chocolate, 2 or 3 flavors of ready-made frosting, or sour cream sweetened with honey and a dash of vanilla or cinnamon for extra flavor.

You can serve the dips right in the containers they come in — cover them with foil, then colored plastic wrap. Tie a ribbon or colored string around each one to keep the foil/wrap together.

Provide a serving spoon for each dip, plenty of toothpicks and little paper plates, and there you have it!

Bonus recipe:

Leftover fruit and cake pieces can be tossed together in a bowl, and drizzled with the sour cream dip for a family dessert after the company has gone home, and you’re too tired to be creative the next day!

desserts

Plain white bread is not all that hard to make. This is the main recipe I use, since it only makes one loaf or a dozen rolls. It’s easy to use this simple recipe as a springboard for other kinds of breads or rolls, with added ingredients, which I’ll outline below. (more…)

There’s often confusion between the functions of these three kitchen appliances — more than any others. They don’t have the same functions, so let’s look at what we ‘ve really got here.

Mixer — This is either a hand mixer, stored in a cupoboard, or a big stand version, that sits on the counter. In some really serious kitchens, has its own little cubbyhole. Mixers are designed to mix or beat things like whipping cream, meringue, or cake mixes. They incorporate lots of air into a batter for fluff purposes. Some of the big ones have dough hooks for kneading bread, and a variety of other attachments.

Blender — Other than making margaritas or crushed ice for parties, a blender can make mayonnaise, gazpacho, or grind peanuts for peanut butter. It cannot beat egg whites for meringues, beat cake mixes, etc. A blender is also good for emergencies, to smooth out a lumpy sauce.

Food Processor – You can chop your veg for a stir fry, zip up a pie dough, grate cheese or cabbage, and slice potatoes for home fries. A food processor is good to make a homestyle salsa, and you may even be able to sneak a commercial cake mix by one, but don’t expect to whip creme in a food processor.

mixers, blenders, foodprocessors

Jenny over at Coaching Cooking was talking about microgreens the other day, and since I live where they grow them, had to add my two cents.

They’re really kinda funny looking in the field. You’ve got all these rows of different-colored, tiny plants that just never seem to get a chance to grow up. We call it “yuppie lettuce.�

It’s harvested by equipment that looks like a giant lawnmower. Unlike a lettuce field, which can often have as many as 50 people working to pick and pack heads of lettuce, a yuppie lettuce field will have a few guys and the giant lawnmower.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve needed to consider kids in anything I cook, as my one and only actual kid is now 28 and almost more of a foodie than I am myself!

One of my commenters asked for suggestions, so here we go! (There are some things I remember, though, that would probably still work for this newer generation.)

Kids love decorated food, lots of shapes and colors, and individual servings.

You can make carrot curls with a potato peeler, make faces on almost anything with raisins, nuts, or olives, and sometimes even go for the food coloring for stuff like purple mashed potatoes, or green milk.

Just the way you arrange something on a plate can make a kid wolf down something he or she wasn’t wild about to begin with. For example, if you make a pinwheel out of wedges of apples and orange sections, you’ve still got apples and oranges, but it looks cooler. You can cut a sandwich in four triangular pieces with an X cut, and put the pieces on the plate with a square space in the middle for some of those carrot curls. (more…)

Is there something unusual and downright odd you love, but nobody else you know would even think of eating? My husband really enjoys peanut butter and onion sandwiches, for example.

My local newspaper, The Yuma Sun, is collecting strange recipes. The whole article is here.

Contribute your weird recipes here.

The Food History blog (also one of the Fine Family of 451 blogs) is one big food story. It’s a can’t-miss, for sure! Check out Gillian’s call for volunteers to try out 18th Century recipes.

Catch the trick-or-treat story at Parenting Children!

Now, there seems to be a bit of confusion as to what a “food story� is. Well, it’s a post about food. Like the one here about the lettuce harvest. Last week we had a group of photos of kids making cake. There might be recipe in there somewhere, but it’s more than a recipe. I admit, this is a new concept, and it’s my fault for not making it clear.

To be sure, I don’t want to disappoint those who submitted straight recipes with no narrative, so I’ll make every effort to include links to those recipes in future posts.

If you haven’t sent in your submission yet, there’s still time! I’ll be checking my e-mail all day and adding whatever comes in. The general focus of your blog is not important, just that the post be about food.

FoodStories

Most of the year it’s so quiet at our place you can hear the flap of a bird’s wing, or a car going down the “big� road, half a mile away. In summer, there are times when I might be the only person in a couple of square miles, after our neighbors, few as they are, go to work.

Winter is a different story altogether. Harvest time.

They come one at a time, in their own cars, and in bunches on busses. The pickers come blessedly late; according to the weather. If it’s too cold, you can’t harvest lettuce, so they have to wait until any hint of frost goes away. In the fields in Yuma, there’s not much just-before-sunup work at this time of year. (more…)

It’s an e-mail that doesn’t say much…

Hi Trudy,

Thank you for visiting http://www.kraftfoods.com/.

The formulation of MIRACLE WHIP Salad Dressing has indeed changed and I’m sorry you were disappointed with your most recent purchase.

Your experience is important to us. I’m sending you reimbursement to replace this product, via first class mail, which you should receive within 7-10 business days.

Our staff works very hard to provide the best tasting and satisfying products to the preferences of most consumers. Your opinion about the product is important to us as well and I will share your comments with our product development staff.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts.

Kim McMiller
Associate Director, Consumer Relations

MiracleWhip

Nothing really secret here: just a few ideas. Sounded like a cool title, though. ;>)

When they first started coming out with flavored Coke – cherry, lime, etc., I was disappointed. It was like there was a scent of the flavor there, but not the flavor. Then the other day, I was in the store, and wondered what people do when they have a 12-pack of Coke but it’s all one flavor, and they have guests that would prefer another flavor, or plain. (more…)

Here’s all the info on the Carnival:

Nerd Mom at Nerd Family has been rounding up great recipes for us all today, and the Carnival of the Recipes is now up for your viewing pleasure: http://blog.nerdfamily.com/2006/10/carnival-of-recipes-114.html. Be sure and leave her a comment to let her know her hard work is much appreciated.

Nerd Mom is a nerd and a mom (thus her Nerd Mom name). She’s a Virgo and was born in the year of the Rabbit. She and Nerd Dad and Nerd Family live in Fresno, California. Find out more about Nerd Mom here (or just read her blog).

Next week’s Carnival will be hosted by Morning Coffee and Afternoon Tea and will have a Halloween theme. Send your spookiest recipes or links to recipe.carnival@gmail.com by noon CST on Saturday. If you wish to host a future carnival send a message to the same address with the word host in the subject line. Thanks to all of you who have agreed to host in the coming months.

For a line-up of future Carnivals , visit our Carnival of the Recipes page on Blog Carnival. You can also review all past Carnival of the Recipes there too.
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/cprof_13.html
http://blogcarnival.com/

Sincerely,
Shawn Lea
http://everythingandnothing.typepad.com

Before you get into paying the big bucks for your tools, there are a wide variety of kitchen utensils available at your local dollar store. Look in at several of them, because they don’t all carry the same things.

Of course, you get what you pay for, so don’t expect a dollar-store item to last long and faithfully. This is a good way, however, to find out what things you’ll use a lot, and want the top-of-the line merchandise.

I buy wooden spoons at the dollar store, because at four in a package for a dollar, they’re at disposable cost, and you’ve always got a clean one handy.