Gourmet Food on a Budget
When I was a little girl, my mother used to go on about how she loved going to her grandmother’s house when she would serve Lobster and Rose salad. I was always hoping that my mother would recreate the recipe, but she never did.
When my great-grandmother was making this salad, lobster was a lot less expensive. I decided that for my birthday, despite to cost, I would recreate Christina Jacobsen’s recipe myself.
Well, December 25 is over, and now all we have to wait for is the New Year celebrations. I thought I would make a list of some recipes that have been popular this year, or you might want to make for your New Year’s Eve event.
Every year, I make a special New Year’s Day dish, but I’m going to hold that one for another post, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I think that you might find yourself making some of 2011’s most popular recipes for your own festivities.
Fruit Chestnut Stuffing and Christmas Salad go very well with a roast goose for a Dicken’s Christmas dinner
Make Three Pepper Spicy Meatloaf, full of flavor and moist without being dried out. Great with mashed potatoes and Cowboy salad.
Paula Deen is going to be at Barnes and Noble to do a book signing this evening at 7 pm. That made me think of how lucky I am to be living here in Glendale, California. We have things here that you just don’t find everywhere else.
This morning, I went to my favorite store, Best Grocery on Maple, and got two big, red tomatoes, a fat slice of smoked turkey and avocado. I went home and made a wonderful stuffed tomato salad.
This afternoon when I was at the local store, I had a taste for Mexican food. I already had frozen taquitos in my freezer (I’m too lazy to make them myself), so all I needed was avocado. Well, surprise, surprise my little store didn’t have any, so I decided to make the white sauce similar to the fish taco white sauce at Rubio’s.
I also had some cabbage in the refrigerator. I love cabbage and it’s very good with Mexican food. I picked up a can of black beans so I could make the same black bean dip I used for my Black Bean Tacos.
Hot Tin Roof Salad is a composed salad that has everything going for it, grilled marinated steak, grilled onions, Persian cucumbers, croutons, and fresh lettuce. It’s a complete meal you can enjoy with friends and a bottle of white wine.
I love this Red Pepper Stuffed with Crab Salad and Guacamole. Okay, so some of you who have been here before know that I am Roman Catholic. Some of you may think that Catholics don’t have to eat fish on Fridays, and you would be correct, they don’t.
Spinach Grapefruit Salad with Bacon Dressing and Candied Pecans, an interesting way to have the famous Spinach Salad. The grapefruit, blue cheese, and candied pecans make a party in your mouth!
Curried Chicken roll-ups are easy to make and a great use for leftover rotisserie chicken. We like to have them with a cucumber tomato salad.