Very, Very, Yummy Peanut Butter Bars!

I was going to wait until later tonight to do a post about the amazing shrimp I got today from my Shrimp Guys but I changed my mind and am going to sit on my butt with my feet up for the night so that post will have to wait until tomorrow.

Anyway, I had about 40 minutes before it was time for me to go and get the girls this afternoon and I realized that they really had nothing for a snack and I had seen a recipe for Peanut Butter Bars earlier this week on A Southern Grace and thought I could make these before I got the girls. Grace's are much cuter and she cut them into little, cute hearts...yep I had about 30 minutes at this point, remember. We had ran out of our regular organic, all natural PB mid week and we have been feeding the girl's some Skippy (egad it has sugar in it????) that I had left over from Christmas baking until I got some on Saturday. So I really wanted to get this used up and out of the house and this was a great way to do it. This whole recipe probably took me about 10 minutes to make and are they ever good but don't take my word for it. Pull out the peanut butter the next time you have 10 minutes that you don't know what to do with!

Very, Very Yummy Peanut Butter Bars (from Recipezaar)

3/4 C graham cracker crumbs
1 1/2 - 2 C powdered sugar
3/4 C peanut butter
1/2 C butter, melted
1 (12 oz) bag semi sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli's semi-sweet and bittersweet chips mixed)

Combine the crumbs, sugar, and peanut butter and mix well. Blend in the melted butter until well combined. Press mixture evenly into a greased or wax paper lined 8X8 pan. Melt chocolate chips and spread over the peanut butter mixture. Chill until just set and cut into bars. Allow to cool the rest of the way before serving.

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Do you like what I'm wearing?

After almost 250 posts on this blog I am officially very tired of the color orange! I have changed my template to a very nice, but boring white and I am so much happier! I still have some work to do on it. I would like to figure out how to put a picture on it and all but that will have to wait...to many other things going on!

I also received an award today from Val at More than Burnt Toast. Val is a fellow Canadian who lives on the West Coast of Canada in British Columbia. She is probably one of the most supportive bloggers you will ever find. If you have a cause to support through blogging Val is your girl! Her recipes are bright and creative with excellent photography. Thanks again Val! Now the one thing that I have to do is to pass this on to 5 more bloggers that "make my day"! Should be easy right...not a chance. I visit anywhere from 20 to 30 blogs a day! Usually when I am waiting for the girls after school and killing my iPhone battery but this makes it very hard. Here are my 5 but please if your name is not there you still "make my day"! The only rules you guys have is that you need to pass it on to 5 more bloggers.

In no particular order:

Peter of Kalofagas - Greek Food and Beyond. Peter has become a great source of inspiration for my daily meals and boy does that come in handy. I hope to be able to meet up with him when I am in Toronto this summer.

Robin at Caviar to Codfish because I really related to how her blog has evolved. You may remember her as The Clumsy Cook but seeing as she was no longer that she changed her profile.

Jenn - The Leftover Queen for her friendship, inspiration and support! You really do make my day!

Heather of Gild the Voodoolily for just being herself and never trying to please anyone other that herself with what she does. Also she just plain and simple makes me laugh!

And last but not least Pam from Life on A Southern Farm - she has an incredible blog about life on a...did you get that...Southern Farm. It is about her past and her present with nice reflections and pictures that take me away to a much more calm and peaceful life. I like that!

Now onto something completely different. I have received quite a few comments about my girls not liking muffins. Yep I do agree that it is very weird but also a very positive thing for them. I have always been a little worried that they would develop really incredible sweet tooth because of the way that we have raised them. Some insight into this...my children eat a very small amount of prepared and pre-packaged food.

We do not have anything in our house that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup (sweetener of choice for almost all foods), they do not eat store bought treats except on rare occasions when we are out. Now what they do get though is cake, muffins, cookies, pudding, yogurt etc that is all homemade. As long as I can control what goes into their food they can have it. I think that what the food industry has done to our food is just incredible and I am doing everything that I can to keep it out of them! The common theory though is that when you deprive your child of something like sweets when you are not there they will do anything they can to get it. I guess I am proving that this is not the case and I can't tell you how happy I am about this!


I also think that children can be a great help in the kitchen and that this will help reinforce the eating choices that they make growing up. Last night I decided to give my 7 year old some lessons in knife wielding and all I can say is that we got to spend some nice time together and she still has all of her fingers!!! I had her cut of the lettuce for my salad and she had a blast...felt like a big girl and all. Do they ever grow up too fast!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

But Mom, these are muffins!!!

I just don't get it. How can my kids not like muffins? I have tried every way possible to get them to eat muffins. I know it sounds crazy but I think that if they ate muffins it would be a nice quick, low impact (on the parents), and healthy thing to start their day. I have seriously tried about 20 recipes and nothing really does it for them. I have a freezer full of ones that they tried and didn't like. I guess I really need to figure out something to do with them!

Anyway yesterday instead of making muffins for my freezer I decided to take a muffin recipe and make it into a cake. Sounds like a great idea huh? Outsmart them once and for all. To no avail. Although they did eat it yesterday when they came home from school this morning for breakfast they wanted nothing to do with it!!! T. and I thought it came out great and have made a nice dent in it so it guess it wasn't all for nothing!

This was really a nice light snack cake and I am still baffled by the fact that my kids will not eat cake for breakfast???!!!

Raspberry Crumb Cake

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup plain, non-fat yogurt
• 3/4 cup low-fat milk
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups frozen or fresh red raspberries
  

Topping:

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
• Dash cinnamon
• 4 tablespoons softened butter

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease and flour a 9X9 cake pan.

In bowl combine yogurt, milk, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar, melted butter, and egg. In separate bowl stir together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Combine the mixtures, stirring only until dry ingredients are moistened. Gently fold in berries. Fill pan.

In a small bowl combine the topping ingredients with a fork until crumbly. Top batter with crumb topping.

Bake for 35-40 minutes

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

A walk through my yard.

My first lettuce harvest!

I took you for a short walk through my yard a couple of weeks ago but so much has changed. The temperature here has risen and we no longer even have much cooling at night. The lowest it has gotten in the last week was 65 degrees. Not very cool at all. Next week looks like it is even higher with a low temp of 70! That is still cool compared to our July, August and September temps.

Needless to say my little container garden is struggling already. I have completely lost my cilantro. I am going to try to get some to grow inside. Hopefully I will get better results. My basil is still doing alright and my tomatoes are starting to ripen. I got my first taste of a tomato and some lettuce from there last night and it was incredible!!!

This is the second tomato to have ripened. They taste so amazing!
Lettuce in desperate need of thinning

My basil is still going strong but the cilantro is done.

My avocado tree has lost all of its fruit but for 3. The tree is pretty young yet so I am happy to have 3 on it. My mango tree has gone nuts. It must have about a 100 starts on it. Hopefully I will be able to get 1 or 2 off of it this year.

3 is better than none!!!

Crazy mango tree. In the next couple of weeks it will drop most of this fruit and only grow what the tree can support!

Onto some food. I have been trying to make beet chips for several weeks now and have yet to find the best method. I use my mandolin to slice them nice and thin. Coat them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme. Place them on a parchment lined sheet pan, pop them into a hot 400 degree oven. I cook them until they start to curl about 20 minutes. Turn them over and keep cooking them. This is where I am running into trouble. Some of there edges burn before the center is cooked. What am I doing wrong? Should I use a lower temp? Thinner slices? Any ideas???

I love my Mandolin!

Beautiful, bright beets!

Any ideas or tips would be appreciated!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Not your normal pasta dish!

The pictures didn't turn out real well (just imagine how happy everyone is seeing me run off with their dinner again!) and it looks real heavy but it isn't. That is all herbs, vegetables and a small bit of feta mixed in. I guess I should have tossed it first!

We were trying to pigeon hole the pasta dish that we had last night and there was no way we could do it. It has some Mexican, Italian, and Greek flavors but none of them were the predominant feature of the dish. When I first looked that the recipe I was pretty skeptical and I really don't use a recipe for past dishes, but I thought this one sounded pretty interesting and it was full of fresh ingredients so I knew it had to be good. Also a major plus was that I didn't have to go out and buy anything. I had it all on hand!

I found the recipe in Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal, and Local Ingredients by Jesse Ziff Cool. This is a great cookbook for anyone who is interested in eating around the seasons.

Of course I added and changed around some things based on what I wanted to get rid of in my fridge.

Last-Of-The-Summer Fettuccine (Adapted from Simply Organic)

Ingredients:

1 lb of fresh fettuccine (we used a good quality Fusilli)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 red bell pepper, thinly sliced (I used 1/2 a green pepper)
2 lg garlic cloves, minced (we used 4-what can I say-we like garlic!)
1/2 shallot, finely chopped (not called for but we had it on hand)
1 jalapeño chili, seeded and minced
1 lg portabello mushroom, diced (not called for but I had it and wanted to get rid of it!)
1/4 cup tequila (they say it's optional, I say it's a must)
2 lg tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
1 avocado, halved, pitted, peeled and chopped
Salt
Fresh ground black pepper

Directions:

• Cook the pasta according to the package directions.Drain and transfer to a large bowl.
• Meanwhile heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and bell pepper and cook for 2 minutes.
• Add the garlic, shallots, jalapeño, mushroom, and tequila and cook for about 1 minute.
• Add the tomatoes, cilantro, and oregano and cook for 3 minutes, or until the tomatoes are soft.
• Stir the cheese and avocado into the sauce.
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• Add the sauce to the pasta and toss well.

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Just Busy!

This is the beautiful bottle of wine that was being featured that night.

I have been a very, very busy Mom this past couple of days. Yes, it sure does seem like I have been saying this quite a bit lately but hopefully it will settle down a bit now.


Thursday night my oldest daughter tested and received her purple belt in Karate! As has been tradition in the past we went out for a celebratory dinner afterwards. We went to La Trattoria Café Napoli for dinner and once again it was an incredible meal. The owner/hostess/server Gloria is a truly amazing presence in this restaurant. Everything that she does is centered around seasonal eating. Just right up my alley.

Clams served in the yummiest broth ever!

We all shared the clam appetizer and I swear the main reason that we get this is for the broth that the clams are cooked in! I think T. and I each got 2 clams and the girls ate the rest). Just fresh tasting and delicious. My meal was a special pasta dish that had shrimp, crab, leeks, and fennel with a nice light saffron sauce. The girls both had calamari (which is their favorite).

This was T.'s veal dish!

When we got home that night T. had to pack because he was going out of town for a couple of days. Unfortunately he was going to miss my youngest ones first skating competition which was bright and early Saturday morning.

Saturday the alarm got us all up and off we went to the skating rink. She had an event at 9 with practice time at 8 and then her main program was at noon. I was so nervous but she was a real star! She placed 3rd in her stroking event and then 2nd in her program!

She looks so small out on the huge amount of ice!!!

I know this post has not been about anything food worthy but trust me the food that I have eaten is not worth writing about. It has been a weekend of pizza and junk. I can't wait to sit down to a real dinner tonight!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Lunch?

I was making my lunch today, after spending the whole morning cleaning up messes, and I looked at it and thought "Summer". I was instantly transported to a beautiful July or early August day up in Canada. I guess it is the smells of the garden fresh basil and the nice juicy, ripe tomatoes that does it.

This is probably my favorite way to eat fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and I know sometimes this is called a "Caprese Salad". I like mine really uncomplicated so I hesitate to call it a Caprese. I like mine with tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, salt and balsamic vinegar. That's it. No olive oil, no capers, no pepper. Just the bright, light flavors of summer.

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com