Can be dressed and ready to go!

Kale seems to be all the rage today. Up until a couple of years ago, I had never eaten kale. Since then I have experimented with kale chips, kale and mashed cauliflower with kale (or potatoes) and just plain old cooked kale.

Our HEB market here sells a Kale salad that comes from the mother ship — Central Market. I’m still mad that the powers that be did not see fit to put a Central Market in The Woodlands about five years ago. Since then we have gotten a Trader Joe’s and a Hubble and Hudson which are great little stores but I miss my trips to Central Market to check out all the unusual things they have. (All I have to do is drive to Houston, but seems like a long grocery shopping trip now since we have so much right here.)

What amazes me about this salad is that it will last for several days after having been dressed at the store (I hope mine last that long). And it really does stay fresh for at least 3 days. We get together with friends occasionally and go out on their boat on Lake Conroe. We usually go out around 5:00, find a nice quite spot and float around on noodles and then have some food and drinks. Although the drinks are happening as we float also. When we went recently, the water was still a little too cold to float in so we just enjoyed the afternoon, friends, good food, wine and the beautiful sunset. This salad was perfect for the afternoon because I mixed it all up with the dressing and it was perfect by the time we were ready to eat.

So, how did I get this recipe. Well I didn’t. Since it is sold in the “foods to go section” of the grocery, they put a label on it saying exactly what is in the salad; I simply copied down the ingredients and set about coming up with an orange sesame vinaigrette recipe. I love the texture of the kale (chopped in small pieces) because it does not get soft or limp after sitting all “dressed” and waiting for you to eat it. The crystallized ginger is yummy in it and the dried cranberries add a lot to the sweet/tart taste of the salad. If you don’t like almonds, substitute walnuts or pecans. I did add bacon to the recipe; never a mistake.

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The vote is in and these are the best blueberry muffins!

Don’t these make you want to grab one and get a cup of tea/coffee or milk.

I always thought I had the BEST blueberry muffin recipe and in fact, in a cookbook that my sister and I put together, that is exactly what I named my recipe — The Best Blueberry Muffins.

If you love blueberry muffins and you think you have a recipe that is wonderful, I would like to hear from you and try your recipe. Like I said I always thought I had the best muffin recipe for those freshly picked blueberries I gather each year. But this recipe is from a friend, Kay, in Missouri (my sister’s husband’s cousin) and my sister had been telling me recently that this was the best recipe and that her husband, Gary, said they were the best he ever had.

Well, I have a freezer full of blueberries from last summer’s harvest and I’ve decided if I’m never picking blueberries again, I need to use up the ones I have in the freezer. For some reason they have a tough skin, I think, when they are thawed and they are not washed before freezing so I know that’s not the problem; but they are wonderful in muffins. Anyway, my berry picking this year will just be blackberries and maybe strawberries.

These muffins freezer beautifully and after thawing and few seconds in the microwave will give you a muffin that taste straight out of the oven.

I made a double recipe of these muffins and put them in a cute wire farm basket and took to craft circle of 50 or so ladies. They were gone before lunch.

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Give any salad a new look.

Ok, I’m sitting around with nothing better to do than think of a way to use a leftover zucchini and then I happened upon a recipe; not really a recipe but more of a presentation idea I saw in Catering Source magazine. (Seems like there is a theme going here of me sitting around with nothing to do — after doing water aerobics a couple of times a week, gym a couple of times a week, craft circle working on doll houses, laundry, shopping etc. etc. I still do have a lot of time left over to ponder unimportant things like a vessel for a salad.)

I would really like a do-over with the last 20 years. Not that I would change one thing about raising my kids or any other thing I have done but I would like to have more time to travel and take cooking classes. What I always loved about catering was, of course cooking the food, but most of all I loved watching others enjoy what I prepared. Maybe I would be a food-truck owner. I love that idea and if I haven’t said it before, one weekend I want to go to Austin and check out at least 4-5 food trucks and sample their foods until I can’t hold another bite. So far, I have only been to the Flip Happy Crepe Truck and had a delicious Nutella and banana crepe which I may try to make sometime soon.

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A quick and easy dessert.

I’m a couple of days late for a Cinco de Mayo dessert but what the heck, this will be good any time of the year.

Chocolate and bananas are made for each other, a match made in heaven; and chocolate, bananas, topped with cinnamon sugar tortillas, grilled and served with ice cream is a combination you do not want to miss.

Ya know, there is so much you can do with a flour tortilla; make chips is the first thing that comes to mind, roll up some fillings or lunch-meat for a quick sandwich; and have you ever tried cutting them up into strips and dropping them in a pot of boiling chicken broth to make chicken and dumplings. The dumplings are delicious by the way and you would never guess they were made from flour tortillas.

These quesadillas are getting spread with Nutella first, then a bananas sliced thinly over the chocolate, and then the tortillas are brushed with butter, grilled and at the end they are sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. You can top these with whipped cream, or ice cream and drizzle a little melted Nutella over and a sprinkle of nuts if you desire a crunch to your quesadilla dessert.

Hope you like these. Please leave a comment below in the comment section if you do; would love to hear from you.

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Sometimes you feel like a nut! Sometimes you don’t!

That’s one candy bar commercial that always rang true with me. Sometimes I did feel like a nut (literally) and other times I just wanted the creamy coconuty piece of candy without the almonds.

Almond Joy and Mounds candy bars are sister bars but with a few differences; the mounds is covered in dark chocolate and the almond joy has milk chocolate with two almonds on each piece. (“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t / Almond Joy’s got nuts ‘ Mounds don’t”. I’m merging the two candy bars into a delicious cool treat for the summer months that are ahead. I don’t think they even have commercials for candy bars any more do they? I just love being able to have a quick and easy ice cream to throw together at the last minute.

I always loved both candy bars when I was younger. My only problem with the Almond Joy was there were only two almonds per piece and I would carefully eat around each almond saving the almonds for the last bite. Now with this recipe I can have the best of both. I can all add all the toasted almonds I want and I can have a dark chocolate shell instead of milk chocolate.

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