Quinoa and berry breakfast!

Healthy and delicious way to start another busy day!

I have recently fallen in love with quinoa. I have used it in soups, as a side dish and most recently like grits or oatmeal for breakfast. The great thing about quinoa is it huge nutrient boost. Its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete food. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten free and considered easy to digest.

With all of this in mind I have been using it when ever I can and the other day I happened upon Heidi's blog at 101 Cookbooks and saw this incredible breakfast recipe using quinoa as the base! My youngest daughter is a tough one to feed breakfast to so I am always looking for something new and healthy and my oldest daughter needs all of the energy foods she can get (with karate and figure skating she burns a lot!). I woke up a little earlier this morning and started cooking. This was a nice easy recipe and I knew how healthy it would be. The recipe easily feeds 4 so there was enough for all of us. Heidi's pictures are way better than mine so be sure to visit her blog to check out the pics!

Can you tell it was pretty early! This is the bright morning sun that shines right onto the pool.

Warm and Nutty Cinnamon Quinoa Recipe (Heidi Swanson - 101 Cookbooks)

Heidi used a red quinoa here, but you can use whatever kind you like, white/buff colored seems to be the most common. Also, a few notes and tips from the book: low-fat soy milk may replace the low fat milk, blueberries may replace the blackberries, dark honey may replace the agave nectar, and walnuts may replace the pecans.

1 cup organic 1% low fat milk
1 cup water
1 cup organic quinoa, (hs note: rinse quinoa)
2 cups fresh blackberries, organic preferred
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup chopped pecans, toasted*
4 teaspoons organic agave nectar, such as Madhava brand

Combine milk, water and quinoa in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer 15 minutes or until most of the liquid is absorbed. Turn off heat; let stand covered 5 minutes. Stir in blackberries and cinnamon; transfer to four bowls and top with pecans. Drizzle 1 teaspoon agave nectar over each serving.

Serves 4.

*While the quinoa cooks, roast the pecans in a 350F degree toaster oven for 5 to 6 minutes or in a dry skillet over medium heat for about 3 minutes.

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

And what a great Mother's Day it was!

2 Mangrove Snapper ready for our plates!

We had an incredible, relaxing day. The weather was great so we had breakfast and I got my wonderful gifts (see previous post) and then lounged around the pool for the day! Nice huh?

Check out the teeth on this fish!!! I guess that's why they call them Snapper!

Dinner came and Tony pulled out the fish. He was able to get some Mangrove Snapper that was fresh caught that morning. I have found my new favorite way to eat Snapper by way of Peter at Kalofagas - Greek Food and Beyond. He did a post last month on Latholemono. which is really just lemon and oil. But boy is it good. Now I always have to mess with perfection and because we have fresh herbs growing in pots right now we bastardized his recipe until it is almost unrecognizable but the inspiration is still there!

Served with some grilled green beans.

Last night T. grilled the fish and topped it with a lemon and oil mixture with garlic, shallots, fresh oregano, fresh basil, parsley, salt and pepper. This is truly the best way to eat freah grilled fish. We always used to just put a quirt of lemon on but this is sooo much better.

See all the fresh herbs and garlic?

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

Happy Mother's Day!

Omelet with sauteed spinach, feta cheese and avocado!

And what a great day it has been. I told everyone here that the only thing I wanted this day was to not have to clean up the kitchen once! So far it has worked! But I also got a whole bunch of things besides that.

First off I was not woken up at 6:00 in the morning. T. got up with the girls and they took the dogs for a long walk and I heard nothing until about 8:00...this is unheard of in our house so I was really pleased. Then came the gifts.

My youngest one had a beautiful card and a silhouette drawn and cut out on a piece of paper and my oldest had a card with a poem that she had written for me, a dolphin figure that she made and a small picture frame. Those gifts are so incredible for me and become true treasures. T. pulled out all the stops and arranged for the girls to have sleep overs at their friends house and for him and I to have a weekend away!!! This is very badly needed and has not been done due to crazy circumstances...hurricanes, car accidents, sicknesses etc. So keep the old fingers crossed on this one!

T. also made me an incredible breakfast omelet. It was filled with all of my favorite things...sauteed spinach, feta cheese and avocado. Life doesn't get much better than this...oh wait, yes it does. He was able to get 2 mangrove snappers for us to grill for dinner. That will be tomorrow's post!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

The Shrimp

Shrimp Taco's with homemade Pico de Gallo, chopped scallions, jalapeños, and avocado!

We are so lucky to be living here in Florida. I get a ton of fresh, locally grown produce (during the winter) and also a ton of fresh, locally caught seafood. During the winter, when I was going to the Worden Farm Farmer's Market, I was standing in line to pay and I heard some one ask if the "shrimp guys" were there. The response was "yes" so I decided to follow the askers and see where they were going. Down the side street and towards the water we went and there was a small shrimp boat that had coolers on the back (would be way to creepy for me to take pictures of this boat and the people that work on it don't ya think? Maybe next time hehehe.) Apparently you just tell the guys what size you want and head on or off.

Well, I got very good at this and we ate shrimp at least once a week, that is until the market ended in April. Before it all ended I got their phone number and on Thursday of last week I called them. They were there and had a load of shrimp. So I headed my car to Punta Gorda to buy some shrimp. I asked them for 1 lb. mediums, head off and 1 lb. large head ons. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with them but I knew I wanted them. So I paid my $12 and off I went...Yep you read that right $12 FOR 2 VERY GENEROUS LBS. OF FRESH BOAT SHRIMP!!!! Pretty cool huh?

See the large size...I really like the beheaded first but you can't have everything (or so everyone keeps telling me!!!).

Thursday night for dinner we just made some pasta and cooked the shrimp in some toasted garlic, shallots and butter. Lots of butter and tossed this with the pasta and loaded on some fresh Parmesan and had a nice easy dinner!

T.'s super, duper, fully loaded shrimp taco!!!

Last night we decided to make shrimp tacos out of them. I made some Pico de Gallo. and popped the heads off the shrimp cleaned them and chopped them up, cooked them in some taco seasoning and added my topping of choice. Great easy dinner for the end of another crazy, busy week!!!

As Always...

Happy Entertaining!!!

Judy
www.nofearentertaining.com

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