At the beginning of the season, it’s not too hard to figure out what to do with the tomatoes as they come off – sliced on salads, sandwiches and hamburgers really are the best. But after a few weeks, you have more than you can eat for lunch! And you don’t want to refrigerate fresh tomatoes, it destroys the taste.  If you must refrigerate them to make them last, bring them out about 24 hours before use to let their natural flavor enzymes rev up.

Easy Weekend Tomato Recipes

So here are my weekend recipes: bruschetta (with tomatoes roasted or not), fresh salsa  – straight or for salads, and of course in our house – grilled!! 

Easy Salsa

Salsa and bruschetta are really first cousins. For simple fresh salsa, just dice the tomatoes, add diced onion and cilantro for the basics. Peppers, garlic, oregano  and fresh corn are up to you –even pineapple and mango are great additions! Beyond chips, salsa is a great topper for fish and hamburgers too!

Easy Bruschetta

Bruschetta you could really call salsa with olive oil! And maybe some extra flavors.  The bruschetta usually goes on toast as an appetizer. Here’s a simple recipe to use.  If you also happen to grow fresh basil, add that in for extra zing!

If you really want to go wild, have some great fresh cold tomato Gazpacho soup for a refresher!

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Easy Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

At the end of the season, I look forward to getting a crate of them to slow roast down to spaghetti sauce.  Just  pile in the quartered tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil and oregano and let it go in the oven all day on low heat (about 250 degrees)- when the water has been largely been cooked out and most things dissolve when stirred – then batch the mixture  in the food processor or put through a food  mill. Then freeze in the size that best suits your cooking. If you tire of spaghetti sauce, you can always add a little milk for creamy tomato basil soup. YUM!

Nothing like fresh tomato taste all year round!

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It reminded me of some of the fundamentals.  I wrote before about how I was humbled by a toaster oven, reminding me to follow directions.  The cooking class reminded me that my knives are probably my most important cooking utensil. I remember how excited I was to get my really good knives when we were married.  After 30 something  years, we now have two sets of knives  – mine have become un-useable to my husband because with pressure, they are now left handed knives.  The rest of the family has another set. (That excludes the serrated ones which are only for righties, unless specially ordered)

Importantly, keeping sharp knives is safer and makes cooking much easier for you to cook with.  My mother is afraid of sharp knives and I can’t tell you how many times the knife has slipped, or it’s taken the force of ten strong men to cut a cantaloupe. In my house, I use the steel on my knife to hone it every time it comes out of the block.  They get professionally sharpened regularly ( well, not as often as they should, but occasionally!)

Because I’m still learning, ( I may love to cook, but I’m not terribly skilled) I ordered a book on knife techniques.  After reading it, the good news is that you don’t need to purchase one.  With a few helpful techniques (which you probably have already adopted) you are in business.  If you want a primer on knives through cutting here’s a great video, if a little dry.  If you want the speed course, here’s another video where more is left to your observational powers.

What are the two most important things I’ve learned in the last ten years?

1.  You can peel a clove of garlic most easily by smashing it with your knife handle like a hammer.

2.  The red pepper trick?  Core your pepper, cut through one side, lay it flat, carve a little “v” out of the bottom and you have a flat sheet of paper to slice.  Thank you Jo!

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The Basic Skills of Cooking: It’s Simple but Follow Directions

Last week I was humbled by a toaster oven!.  I think of myself as a pretty good cook, but every now and then we all need a “comeuppance” as my Grandma would say!

It all started when I needed to show our SRVP’s how versatile Beer Bread really can be.  We just had a meeting where I handed out the “21 Ways to Make Beer Bread” sheet, and now I really wanted to prove that no one should leave a party with just one box.

So I went to the store and bought ingredients to make 5 different varieties –sweet and savory.  I happened to be in the Hampton Inn where they generously let me their convection oven in the kitchen so I could make them all at once.  Well, convection ovens cook differently, of course.  Faster, but not quite so thoroughly, and I was making so many at once……

After rotating them around, I finally got them the crust looking toasty brown, but they still looked a little wobbly and didn’t sound right.  So I figured I bake a fresh one in a small aluminum pan at work the next morning in the toaster oven.  I whipped it up (Yummy with chocolate chips)  and went to do a few things.  I just about burned the building down!.

My bread was in too small a pan, so it rose into the coils and burned! And SMELLLED! And looked AWFUL! Then I went to cut the loaves from the night before – the crust was like leather and the inside was still a little soggy.  So I salvaged what I could and ….

This week I got a new large size toaster/convection oven. I have some new bread samples to try on my desk so I got to work.  I am now on the 5^th loaf

• the first was a small aluminum pan that rose, but looked like pudding in the middle
• the second was on convection and was almost as burned as the one that rose into the coils (and I accidentally left it on for hours!)
• the third was a slight dark brown with a crust that tasted like more leather

So I bought a real loaf pan….

• left it on convection, turned down the temperature and it was edible (in fact Chris Johnson, our meeting planner ate almost the whole loaf!)
• I’m on number 5 now  – and I ‘ll photograph it shortly.

The moral of the story:

         1.  Read the instructions – they were actually tested

         2. Use the right equipment – if it says 9×5 metal pan, they mean it

         3.    Never leave your oven untended

         4.    Learn how your own oven works, some tend hot or cold

          5.   Expect Disasters – they are part of cooking and make you better

Success at Least! I mean Last!

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We all know that you eat with your eyes as well as your mouth, so food styling for the catalog is very important.  There can be a lot of “bad press” about how food stylists “cheat” the dishes to make it appropriate for a magazine shoot.  Take for example ice cream, it’s impossible to get real ice cream not to melt under hot lights.  But the attitude of companies, savvy consumers and digital photography have changed the issues in shooting food and allowed all of our photography to be much more “natural”.

When we prepare food for the catalog, we actually create and test recipes (that’s a popular day in the office because they get to taste finished dishes, not just product).  At the shoot our fabulous stylist Catrine Kelty  prepares each of the dishes (with leftovers) and then works with our great photographer  Paul Saraceno to  bring it to you in the best possible light.

It’s true that we do help out our dishes a little – after all they do have to sit on the table for hours at a time and need to keep looking fresh.  We spritz the lettuce with water to make it glisten, hand arrange the leaves, stack berries just so, and melt our cheese with a gun that peels paint off  walls so it gets perfectly brown.

Tips to Make Your Table Look Great

Here are the top  tips that Katrine uses in preparing our food whether for photography or your family table.

1. Set the table beautifully – make sure you keep a nice centerpiece and candles ready to be lit every night.
2. Use fresh, high quality ingredients – there’s nothing more sad than wilted lettuce!
3. Light a candle!

Quick, Yummy Quesadilla Recipes

Like those quesadilla?  Well here are two of our great recipes using the Two Sisters Gourmet Black Bean and Corn Salsa, but you can really add your f avorite ingredients and make them your own:

1. Black Bean and Corn Quesadillas
2. Chorizo Quesadillas

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But if you aren’t that fortunate, we have found some help.  At My Fridge Food, you can actually click on your favorite ingredients and it will pull up recipes for you to choose from.  I put in cheese, salt and pepper, eggs, milk, pasta and chicken and it pulled up nearly 100 recipes ranked by the percentage of required ingredients I had on hand.  It also gives the number of ingredients, time and number of calories in the dish.  Truth be told, I probably had the missing ingredients in most cases…..but it’s fun to see what creative things you can make with so little!

 Tell me, what’s in your ‘fridge and what do you do with it?

At the end of the holidays, I don’t know about you, but my fridge needs a good cleaning – so I can see the shelves again.  If you feel the same after weeks of  treats and leftovers, you might enjoy this. On the lighter side, here is a photo essay on what your fridge says about you!  For a good laugh and some self awareness!

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Be prepared for unexpected holiday guests, have some extra snacks!

Well, it’s official, we are again in the holiday season.  Lights are up and expectations are high to be jolly, happy or oozing with extra good cheer – it’s enough to make you crazy.  As  a  Mom, you feel like the happiness of everyone around you is dependent on what you do!  But give yourself a break – if you are not happy, neither will anyone else be.

There are now three days before we leave to visit my mother for the holidays.  I’m a little stressed.  So I will do what I always do – make lists.  If I can take a big task and break it down into little ones, I feel much more successful and things will get done. I will make Christmas lists, and hit the internet.  I will make shopping lists and store them on my phone.   I will make packing lists, so that I can keep things in one suitcase – and I will put them all on the calendar so that as I get closer to THE DAY, the list will shrink instead of grow and I will feel better not worse.

But more importantly, I need to realize it is not my job to make everyone happy.  True, it’s easier now that the children are grown and I can realize that much of the struggle we had during those teenage years was as much my problem as theirs.  They were trying to show me they were responsible for themselves, and I had to learn to let them be responsible. 

This year my family is beginning to scatter around the U.S. as we become part of other people’s families and celebrations.  They each have a desire and responsibility to contribute to everyone’s happiness – and they want to.  The joy of making others happy is now the gift they have to share -  that and a few recipes from home. Let me know how you and your family share the holidays.

Still there is that central role you have to play – so make it easy for yourself, at least on the food front.

5 Steps to Making Holiday Cooking Easier

1.  Put out a plate of fresh, ready to eat fruit for the day.  Let them help themselves.  In many European countries it’s a tradition that they put out a plate of food for the 12 Days of Christmas – one for each day.  It includes dried fruit (like apricots), cheese, nuts, fresh fruit (like clementines and grapes) and some wrapped candy. 

2.  Prepared food is good food.  –  Make a pot of soup – only twice what you would normally prepare – freeze half for the day so that you’re ready for guests coming at odd hours or those running late. If you don’t have the extra time now, a roast chicken from the grocery store is a great, warm dinner.

3.  Keep It Simple – As much as I love to cook, I am always humbled by the fact that the family seems to love easy comfort food as much if not more than things I slave over.  We had a week full of delicious dishes – but my son, Scott was happiest with the easy mac he made for himself. It was inexpensive and easy, and reminded him of being a kid again.

4.  Let People Help!!  -  I’m always guilty of this one.  I invite people over, they say “what can I bring?” and I say “Just Yourself!”  What was I thinking?   I am learning to say, “Thank you, yes” and everyone feels better.

5.  Keep some “extras” on hand! – The one thing I have trained the family to do, is put something on the grocery list when they use up the last one.  Particularly around the holidays, there should be some no thought food around.  For a late night meal, I take a can of tomato soup, add a can of minced clams and a little milk and I have a wholesome meal.  When people drop by, I have some mini-bagels,  frozen pigs in a blanket, TSG Cheeseballs or a jar of Sweet and Spicy Pepper Jelly over cream cheese – and everyone is happy!

If you are relaxed and happy, so will be those around you.  Give up control and enjoy the holidays.

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The Working Girl posted an article, “10 Things Cooking Taught Me About Life”  by Kim O’Donnell that not only touched her, but resonates with the cook in all of us. BSVCZRN9VZA6

What Cooking Means to Me:

It made me reflect on what cooking means to me.

1.  I find it therapeutic. If I’m cranky I will chop a little harder.  If I’m moping around I can conjure up smells that take me to the happiest of times – a fresh apple pie to remember apple picking afternoons filled with smiling faces.

2.   Cooking connects me with  the cycles of nature. Think about the  day-long pot of spaghetti sauce project necessary to soak up that whole case of tomatoes from the farmer’s market (what was I thinking!).  The trip to the Farmer’s Market was a delight – a warm sunny Saturday, pouring over fresh produce, seeing friends and neighbors, and knowing that the piles of tomatoes will bring summer memories during a cold evening.

3.  Cooking gives me time to step out of my daily routine and think. When I get to cook on one of these leisurely sessions, I turn on classical music and contemplate the more important things in life. I’m frequently thinking about the kids visiting  for a holiday, when I can see my Mom 2,500 miles away and how lucky I am to have family who loves spending time  together.

4.  Cooking let’s me show I care. To me and to many, cooking is a universal display of love and concern. Sometimes words just aren’t enought.  There’s always the “cheer you up from the lost game” dinner or a “friend hurt your feelings, so here’s comfort food” dinner.  One of my favorites is “let me fix your favorite meal to bribe you to come home” dinner.  The fact that they come and are cheered up are my greatest rewards.

What have you learned about life through cooking? Or describe whose life you have touched with your cooking. After all, cooking is all about bringing friends and family together!

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I can’t believe I didn’t know this!

Of all the silly things, you know how when you pull out a long sheet of aluminum foil, the cardboard tube pops out of the box?  Well apparently the company does too! There are instructions on the end of the box to push in a little tab that holds the roll in place so it doesn’t fall out and roll all over the kitchen floor!.  While that makes the dogs happy, it doesn’t do too much for me – so problem solved!  See the photo that led me to it.!

Cooking Your Turkey: Thanksgiving Help!

And while you’re getting ready for Thanksgiving – if you have a question or a crisis, don’t forget the Turkey Helpline from Butterball 1-800 –Butterball (1-800-288-8372) or check out their top ten questions.  They answer more than 100,000 Questions every November and December – so I’m sure they can handle your as well!

Turkey Help from Butterball

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