This tarantula costume is so easy to make. You can make it for a child or an adult. For a girl or woman who wants to be a “black widow”, just add some red ribbon in the shape of an hourglass. Have a great Halloween!
Barbecued Chili Garlic Shrimp – Gambas Al Ajillo
Barbecued chili garlic shrimp makes an excellent appetizer or main dish with salad. Something different to put on the grill or even on the stovetop.
Strawberry Torpedoes – Balsamic Infused Mocha Stuffed Strawberries
I recently joined a great MeetUp, Entrepreneurs Professionals Glendale, and wanted to bring something nice for everyone to share. One of the members, Aron Ganz of Ganz Media gave the berries their name, Strawberry Torpedoes, a much shorter name, and I am grateful for that!
This is a group of entrepreneurs and professionals, who own small to medium businesses. We are not drones of the corporate world, and realize that even though being self-employed has its difficulties, it has huge rewards. Our group, led by Lynn Sarkany of MarketFinders, meets to exchange ideas to help our businesses, share stories, and network with each other. If you are a like-minded individual, you might consider joining us. Please visit Entrepreneurs and Professionals to find out more.
I had recently found a whole bunch of baking chocolate on sale, had some strawberries and a package of cream cheese. But, instead of making the Cheesecake Stuffed Chocolate Dipped Strawberries that I made last time, I thought I would add a little more adult flavor to the dish.
I added cocoa, coffee, vanilla, almond and cinnamon to the cream cheese filling, and I injected the berries with balsamic vinegar. When you bite into these berries, they explode flavor into your mouth.
Nancy’s Garlic Parmesan Crusted Chicken with Fingerling Potatoes
This is just the simplest, best-tasting chicken. A former Pan Am stewardess gave me the recipe – you know it’s got to be good!
Crab Bisque
Recipes in this Post
I am so happy that it is finally getting cooler in Southern California. As a matter of fact, there was thick cloud cover this morning, and I had to wear a sweater. It was a good day for soup.
After making Crab Salad with Thousand Island Dressing, I had a half a package of crab left over. I also had some cream left over from making something else. I knew I needed to use that crab, I needed to use the cream, and I wanted something warm. I have always liked crab bisque, so I decided to make that.
I had this brilliant idea when looking in my pantry and spying a can of Great Northern white beans. I didn’t have that much cream, and I really wanted the soup to be filling. To compensate for not using real crab, or real crab stock, I added a little anchovy paste for flavor. Both additions worked beautifully. Honestly, if you wanted to, you could omit the cream completely, as the beans do a fine job of thickening without all those calories.
Thousand Island Dressing with Balsamic Toasts
Recipes in this Post
Why would anyone want to write about Thousand Island Dressing? It’s yucky! It’s that reddish stuff that sits on the salad bar and congeals because no one wants it, and rightly so. It’s the “secret” sauce on the Big Mac and has become so common that you probably don’t even notice it on your sandwich anymore. That’s a pity because this is a grand dame of salad dressings with an interesting and honorable history.
Thousand Island Dressing is named for the archipelago of 1,864 islands that straddles the Canada-U.S. border in the Saint Lawrence River. Some of the islands are very small indeed. The one pictured above supports a single tree and two bushes. The dressing was popularized by May Irwin, a Canadian vaudeville star in the 1890s. She had a home in Grindstone Island, one of the Thousand Islands. She said that the dressing reminded her of the Thousand Islands, and enjoyed the dressing so much that she requested the recipe from Sophia LaLonde, a fishing guide’s wife who frequently made the dressing for her husband. Miss Irwin then gave the recipe to George Boldt, the proprietor of the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, who instructed his the hotel’s maître d’hôtel, Oscar Tschirky, to put the dressing on the menu. In 1950 the dressing became a standard and started its decline into the gloppy mess we have today.
One of the things we do at The Good Plate is to reconstruct packaged foods, so they taste better, and don’t have the preservatives common in packaged foods. I knew that venerable Thousand Island Dressing deserved a better place, and making it from scratch would make it one of my favorites, especially for seafood salads.
I made a crab salad for the dressing, and some Balsamic Toasts to go with them. This was amid Spane and his friend making Play Dough on the stove. There are little bits of homemade Play Dough all over the place. Time to clean!
Stuffed Ciabatta Garlic Bread – Great with Antipasto
Stuffed Ciabatta Garlic Bread makes a great appetizer or side for a big salad.
We are very lucky living in Glendale, where there is a wonderful bakery that makes the best bread, including a Ciabatta bread. When I picked Spane up this afternoon and needed some things at the store, I passed by the bread aisle and couldn’t help smelling the fresh bread.
This bread was pillow-soft with a crisp crust very reminiscent of the true Ciabatta bread found in the Lake Como region of Italy. It is nothing like the stuff that comes from mass bakeries.
Since the bread is small but rather flat and elongated, I knew it would be perfect for Stuffed Garlic Bread to go with our Antipasto Salad with Original Brown Derby Dressing.
Suggestions on Making Stuffed Ciabatta Garlic Bread
When making this, you could use a relatively soft Italian bread or even sourdough would work well. Choose the cheeses that you like. Some sun-dried tomato would be good with this. Some homemade pesto would be another option. If you want to have an alfresco dinner with the grill, then wrap the bread well with foil to void burning it. Enjoy!
I highly recommend using Penzey’s Tuscan Sunset instead of Italian seasoning. It’s the perfect blend and I find myself using it a lot. It’s salt-free and has a much fresher flavor.
Original Brown Derby Salad Dressing for Antipasto
Sometimes it’s a terrible thing to get old enough to remember wonderful restaurants that have closed down, notably The Brown Derby in Hollywood and Little Joe’s in Downtown Los Angeles. I’ll show you how to recreate some of the iconic recipes from these wonderful places.
Peaches Sautéed with Marsala and Cream
Recipes in this Post
I really love peaches. I like peaches and cream ice cream, I like peach preserves, I like peaches out of hand, I just like peaches.
My neighbor brought me some peaches a few days ago, and I wanted to make something simple for breakfast for Spane. I suddenly remembered I had peaches in the refrigerator, and decided to cook them off, much like I did Rosy Peaches.
Peaches Sauteed with Marsala and Cream is a very simple recipe, and quite tasty. I served it over pound cake that I had lying around, but it would also be great on cereal, or on toast, or just in a bowl. You could have it for breakfast like we did, or as a dessert.
Apartment Vegetable Garden
Plants in this Post
Has this happened to you? Have you had a vegetable start growing roots in your refrigerator? Green onions have done that to me numerous times, and I have always thrown the root part out. This time when that happened, I said “If you can live in my refrigerator, then you can live outside in dirt.”
We live in an apartment, and we don’t have a patio or yard, and yet I have always wanted to grow at least some of my own food. Well, Charlie, as my friend called him, started me on our apartment vegetable garden. I will be updating this post regularly as the vegetables grow.
We already had a basil plant that was doing fine living on top of the outside of the air conditioner. We even named her Lucille, but her name is pronounced the way that Little Richard did it in his song by the same name, Lucille. I have provided a video if you don’t remember it.
My good friend, who is the director of United States Soldiers Assistance Center and board member of Heal Children with Cancer Worldwide, suggested I use an unused dresser drawer for my garden. She was right, and the garden is doing fine.
