It's Not A Mojito....It's Not A Margrita...What Is It?

It's no secret that I love mojitos and margaritas but what do you do if you are missing ingredients?
I have found more times then not that missing ingredients for a recipe, has forced me to come up with new recipes and some are so good you just have to spread the word. Of course there are also those times when you must get in your car and go to the store too. I think once upon a time I really did want to be a bartender but now I'd rater be a foodie who sometimes comes up with new drinks. I love that major food stores are carrying these baby grapes because the only other place I ever got to pick them up at was my friend Barbra's backyard. Again Thank you Costco and Trader Joes.

Champagne Grape Fizz
"Come up with a better name and I will give you the credit"

1/4 Cup of Champagne Grapes**
1/2 juice of one Lime
3/4 Tbsp of Blue Agave Nectar
2 oz of Gold Tequila
Fizzy water or club soda (plain or lime)
Ice chips, crushed or cubed

Serves 1

Get a pint glass rinse grapes and slide your fingers down the grapevine over the glass.
Pour in agave, lime juice and muddle aka smash with a wooden spoon or pestle. Throw in some ice, pour tequila over that, muddle a little bit more and top off with soda water. It does look odd but taste great and refreshing.

**now found in Costco and Trader Joes


It reminds me of Asian "Bubble Tea"

Tips:
If you like straws you need the really big one like from bubble tea or "Jack in the Box"

Salmon Cakes Lastnight...Tonight Seafood Enchiladas

I love enchiladas because they are so versatile, beef, pork, seafood and vegetarian. That is one thing I believe I do well, being versatile in my cooking. I believe that is why I love cooking foods I can change 100 ways. Who knew that my new creation of salmon cakes would morph into salmon enchiladas. I have never used fish in my enchiladas other then shellfish but these were so easy and yummy, I wanted to share them with you. You are using the Salmon Cake mix leftovers before you cooked it because if you cooked the cakes I'm sure there were no leftovers :)

Salmon Enchiladas
2 Cups of Salmon mix**
3/4 Cup of Sour Cream or Plain Nonfat Greek Yogurt
1 Cup of grated Mozzarella
1/2 Cup of Chili Verde Sauce**
2 Flour Tortillas

Preheat Oven 400

In a bowl mix together salmon mix and sour cream.
Lightly oil the bottom of a baking dish and lay down one flour tortilla add your salmon mixture, top with cheese, roll and make sure seam side is down. Repeat 1-3 times :)
Now spoon on your Verde sauce, top with more cheese and bake for 20 minutes.



Topping:
I like to mix Chili Verde sauce with plain regular yogurt

**Salmon Cakes recipe
**For this recipe I use Chili Vere in a can
makes:
4 little enchiladas or 2 big "burrito" enchiladas (my favorite)

In The Mood For Grilled Salmon?

I was in the mood for salmon fresh off the BBQ until I grilled it....Matt and I threw on some eggplant steaks, T-Bone steaks and I really wanted to grill that salmon for lunch or dinner the next day. Well the next came and I was so out of the mood for salmon, I did not know what to do. My mother-in-law had told me about this warm potato salad with salmon but I did not feel like that either. What else? I was on the phone with my mother-in-law and I asked if she had any quick clever ideas, yes she did! Salmon Croquettes aka salmon patties, somewhere in that moment I came up with crab cakes made out of salmon....Now that could be good! I said "love ya Deb but I gotta go cook now" and off I went. I love when I have an idea and I can just run with it, I had left over brown rice, fresh picked dill, walla walla onions from Sherries garden and panko (Japanese break crumbs).

Salmon Cakes

2 Lbs of Grilled Salmon (I had grilled it with a few fresh basil leaves and sea salt)**

1 Egg

2 Walla Walla Onions chopped fine (any sweet onion)**

1/2 Cup of cooked brown rice**

1/2 Cup of Panko

2 tsp of black pepper

1 Tbsp of fresh dill

1 Tbsp of EVOO

In a bowl with a fork flake your salmon, add your chopped onion, dill and egg, mix well. Then add your brown rice, next add your panko and black pepper. Drizzle some evoo in a pan, make patties with your hand and lightly brown on each side. They might fall apart a little but make sure you press them together well before cooking. I make a long football shape and eat it on a toasted croissant with tarter sauce(see below) fresh tomato and shredded lettuce or hearts of romaine. This will make over 8 large patties or 10-12 smaller patties, I made 6 patties and saved the rest for tomorrow night.

Tarter Sauce

2 Tbsp of Best Foods (Hellmanns)

1 Tbsp of finely diced dill pickle

mix in a bowl and it will keep in fridge for about 1 week

**I like to grill my skinless salmon in aluminum foil so I don't loose it through the grills and it stays really moist but I leave the foil open so it has the BBQ smoky taste. I also love cooking salmon on cedar planks.
**a little smaller then a tennis ball but larger then a golf ball
**if you have a Trader Joes (www.traderjoes.com) buy their stir fried brown rice with shitaki mushrooms in a clear plastic bag, it comes cooked and is wonderful to use in recipes like this. It is so good I love to eat that with a big salad sometimes for lunch.

A Great Breakfast Can Be Faster Then You Think

I never have been the kind of girl that liked to eat in my car, on the go or worse have a shake for lunch??! Yuk! I'm sorry that just sounds wrong.
I understand that many people need to get up, eat and go. I also understand the importance of a good breakfast. I will show you how to make a egg sandwich that is faster then a take out line and better for the pocket book. Either on a croissant, english muffin or sourdough toast. I love mine on croissant and if you do use a english muffin only use one egg and one sausage.

Fast Breakfast Sandwich

1 Croissant cut lengthwise like a sandwich**
2 eggs
2 breakfast sausage (or one depending on if you like patty's)
2 tsp of evoo

Cut your croissant in half, pop in the toaster.
Drizzle your oil in a large fry pan
drop your sausage in a hot pan, cook for 1-2 mins
Crack your eggs in the same pan or pour in if you like them completely scrambled. (I like to crack mine in a pan, break the yolks and flip a few times.) Your sausages should be cooked fully by the time your eggs are done. Cut in half lengthwise to finish them faster if not or to cover your whole sandwich. Your toaster has been keeping your bread warm for you to fill it up and go! You can also cut up in little slices and mix with the egg. No matter how you do it, it will take you less then 10 minutes. Skip the cheese with the croissant you will not miss it I promise!
Know what you are feeding your family in the morning.

Thank you for reading,
Ms. Foodie

Pizza On A Flour Tortilla

I feel like I'm having pizza week, long days and pay check to pay check makes for clever ideas. I had a friend who used to make me "Mexican Pizza's" and I loved them. So one day I was thinking taco bell used to make some kind of pizza between two flour tortillas, that reminded me of my friends pizza. I decided to take that a step further and just make any kind of pizza on a flour tortilla.

Mushroom Feta Pizza With Garlic Oil
2 Flour Tortillas
3 Tbsp of EVOO
3 Cloves of Fresh Garlic (minced)
1 Cup of Medley Mushrooms (shitaki, cremini, oyster)**
2 Handfuls of Baby Heirloom Tomato's (yellow and orange grape tomatoes)
3/4 Cup of Kale**
1/2 Cup of Feta
1/3 Cup of Fresh Mozzarella


Set your oven to 550 with pizza stone in the oven, if you don't have a pizza stone make one (see my other homemade pizza to learn more).

You can do these on foil...but pizza stones really are worth their weight in gold especially if you pay under $5 :)


Lightly drizzle evoo (extra virgin olive oil) on the backs of tortillas, lay them down on foil and drizzle about 1 Tbsp of evoo on tortilla, sprinkle garlic, mushrooms, cheeses, tomato halved & kale. (this is half of the toppings)

Repeat....with the other half of toppings :)

Takes 10 min to crisp so watch it close.

** I really love my dried mushrooms I get from Costco for $16 they do last me a few months and I always use them but fresh would also be good.

I will share many more pizzas so watch for them...
Ms. Foodie

Margarita's With A Twist

Who doesn't love a margarita on a summer's night? I have a friend Sherri who told me about this fun recipe and it really is good. I admit I had my doubt because I thought about the beer I love to drink, heffs, porter, stout eewww but cheap tasteless beer or even light tasting beer like Corona now that could be good.

This will make 4 Margaritas

Lime Margarita
1 Frozen can of limeade
4 Limes
8 oz of Tequila
1 Can of cheap beer (Hamms or Natural Ice)
Ice to fill glasses

You can blend this in a blender but I'm the on the rocks kinda gal...

Cut limes in half, wipe juice around rim and dip in salt if you wish, kosher salt is pretty or sea salt. Then fill each glass with 1/4 of frozen limeade, squeeze the juice of one lime, add 2 oz of tequila over ice, mix well, then top with more ice ad fill to the top with beer, mix a little and party on!
I have tried other beers but the 2 I listed are the best and I love Cosco's German Lager, it ads a new dimension of flavor and a pretty orange hue like a Cadillac Margarita.

Cooking With Passion...May Cause You To Loose Your Mind

I really do love cooking and most of the time I cook with my sense of smell, taste, mood and Passssion! Often I will start with an idea of what sounds good and mix it with what do I have in the fridge. I've tried really hard these past few years of not cooking the same old thing unless it was such a smash that I could not bare to never eat it again. Taking pizza for an example, tonight I wanted pizza with my zucchini I picked from the garden. So the only thing I knew I had was fresh mozzarella, basil, garlic and whole canned tomatoes. Sounds pretty good right? So I open the fridge and see my little sweet onions, I forgot I had just picked up baby heirloom tomatoes in different colors...yummy. In the back I see a few leftover marinated artichokes I've wanted to use up, now this looks like another wonderful veggie pizza. Of course one of my staples in the kitchen "dried gourmet mushrooms." break a few of those up add some hot water, make a quick sauce and start dicing! How I made my sauce:

Quick Tomato Sauce
For Pizza and Pasta

3 whole tomatoes with some juice from a can
5 Basil leaves torn
1/2 head of roasted garlic**

Take a little sauce pan and dump in the tomatoes with juice, tear basil leaves and bring to a boil.
When it starts to bubble, stir so it does not scorch.
Squeeze your head of garlic until you pull out 4-6 roasted cloves drop them in when the tomato sauce starts to look thicker.
Cook down until all the runny liquid is evaporated and you have a sauce that holds it's form on a spoon.
Let the sauce rest and cool down a little bit while you get your ingredients finished.


Now I start chopping my onion, fish out the artichokes, save the marinade for tomorrows salad. Chop the artichokes, squeeze the water out of the mushrooms, save and freeze that juice for another sauce. Slice in half about 6 yellow grape heirlooms and cut up a few of the bigger tomatoes. Get the mozzarella, squeeze out the extra water/whey and run the knife through it so I have different sizes. The oven beep's at 550 so I grab the olive oil, drizzle really fast on my pizza stone apx size of my piece of lavash. Oil running off a hot pizza stone dripping in your oven is not only messy but a smoky, hard to breath environment I do not recommend!

Lavash is down, sauce is spread with the speed of light, sprinkle onions, scatter artichokes, throw mushrooms all around and toss on mozzarella. Shut the oven door and in apx 10 min the pizza will be crisp and perfectly melted...ready to devour. I usually do this with my guy so that you can shut the oven door faster, we alternate who does what, it's crazy and fun.

It is not even 10 min yet but the pizza looks yummy and smells amazing! We pull it fast with a metal spatula from the pizza stone onto a cutting board, slice it up, go sit down with little pizza plates and ice cold champagne, just like that. I take a huge bite and savor that moment, take a sip of champagne and oooppps I FORGOT THE ZUCCHINI!!!!! We both started laughing because the zucchini was the whole reason I started cooking this pizza in the first place.

I realize I get sidetracked but even more so I realize that when I'm in my zone, doing what I love and passion takes over.....I'm out of my mind, I'm out of my head, I'm in the food zone and I LOVE IT!

Hope you enjoyed,
Ms. Foodie

Sinfully Delicious....PB & Chocolate Sandwich...Oh My

Take me back to the days of PB & J and I say.....Whatever. Melt chocolate all over my sandwich and I say "Now Your Talking!" This is a sin and one of my most favorite fill me up heart and soul sandwiches. I can't think of a better way to finish a whole glass of ice cold milk then this.

I got this idea when I was starting to get sick of grilled cheese sandwiches, of course I had been eating them almost non stop for about 3 months. One day I was in the mood for peanut butter and chocolate which I love to eat off a big table spoon with cold milk. I had moved into a house I was rehabbing and I only had a gas stove top. So that was how I was making toast hahaha (no fat there). When I want to scoop out a dollop of Nutella it was hard because it was cold, you can't microwave the jar so I thought I would warm it on bread. I had this wonderful 9 grain bread, I put a little pad of butter down, threw on a slice of bread and scrapped out a chunk of Nutella. Of course at this point I want to add peanut butter, it was so melty I wanted to cover that with bread too...Hey a toasted PB and Chocolate sandwich.
That was how my delicious sin was born.

Peanut Butter and Nutella Sandwich

2 tsp of Butter
2 Slices of 9 Grain Bread
1 Tbsp of Nutella
1 Tbsp of Peanut Butter
1 Ice Cold Glass of Milk

Assemble in hot frying pan....yummmmy!

Another BBQ Meal ... For The Summer...You Won't Miss The Meat!

I do love salad all year round but when summer hits and veggies are in their prime, I go crazy!

I found this new show I love called BBQ University and Steven made these beautiful portabellas with a chimichurri sauce on them. I do love to BBQ portabellas because they really do take on more of a meaty flavor. I wanted to pair this with some garlic mashed potatoes and a honey lime jicama salad. Steven had his with pico del gallo and I missed his chimichurri recipe, I could not find it but I have my own. I love meat and potatoes so of course mashed potatoes were my perfect answer to this delish dish!

Chimichurri Sauce
1 Bunch of Cilantro
1/2 bunch of Parsley (curled or flat leaf)
3/4 Cup of EVOO
Juice of one and half Limes
2 Garlic cloves
6 Basil Leaves
1 Serrano Pepper (I use half the seeds)
1 tsp of sea salt

Puree all ingredients in a blender or food processor.
next you will need:

6 Large Portabella Mushrooms
Wipe off and rinse the button part if you need to, pull out the stems.

Take some chimichurri sauce and make 6 little spots (size of a silver dollar) on a baking sheet.
Place bellas down stem side up (aka gill side), spoon one Tablespoon of chimi sauce for each mushroom and keep the rest for when you grill. Let rest for 1-2 hours in the fridge or 30 min covered at room temp. (while you are waiting make your salad) After your coals are grey and hot, place your portabellas GILL SIDE DOWN. Cook covered only 3-4 min and flip, once you have turned them over spoon on rest of your chimichurri sauce and drizzle with just a little olive oil to keep them moist. Cook covered again for less then 4-5 min (make sure not to burn them).
Because this is not meat you can transfer cooked bellas to the original baking sheet and plate up, it's time to eat!


Jicama Salad
1/2 Jicama
1/2 Green Pepper
1 Cucumber seeded
1/4 Cup of Cilantro
1/8 Cup of Onion (white or yellow)
4 Roma Tomatoes
Juice of 1/2 Lime
1 Tbsp of Honey


First place Honey and Lime juice in a bowl and mix, then...
Chop and dice, mix in the bowl to coat with juice and honey.


I peel my potatoes and boil salted water before I light the coals.

Orange Mashed Garlic Potatoes
8 Russets peeled
1 Sweet Potato peeled
6 Roasted Cloves of Garlic**
1/2 Cup of Heavy Cream
Milk if you need more liquid when whipping

Drop potatoes in boiling salted water, wait till you can poke with fork easily. Drain and put over hot pot to make sure all the water is out.
If you have a ricer then run potatoes through that if not pre-mash them in pot and then whip them with mixer, add cream and garlic, whip some more.
You will not need butter but I love a little fresh ground pepper.


**My "roasted garlic" is in this blog.



This is my whole meal, the picture looks a bit off because you can not see the gorgeous orange hue my perfectly mashed potatoes really looked and the sauce looks like it's sitting rather rather then bathing my just right grill portabellas. I would love a food photographer to come click some pix for me :)

These Sliders Will Score A Home Run

I will admit I'm not a huge sports fan but I do love sports food sometimes and it was at a sports bar where I first discovered sliders. I thought it was a cute idea but I also thought there beef was on the dry side. I have learned there are those who like to add only to the bun and there are those who add mostly to the meat. I love adding things to my meat and bun to give a balance without eating the same ol hamburger over and over again. Not to long ago I was watching Rachel Ray cook off with Bobby Flay in a show down of who made the best burger. Rachel always calls herself the burger queen and although I'm great at burgers I would not call myself the queen in that category.
Bobby said that Rachel was making meatloaf not hamburger and that struck me funny because in a way he was right. So I tried Bobby's way of salt and pepper the beef and add crazy things to my bun, I found the beef to be dry. For me I am siding with Rachel on the burger thing, flavor the meat before you cook it! I call these sliders my St. Paddy's because they look so green when you first flip them it's almost scary.
I love these the best made with ground turkey rather then beef but make both and judge for yourself.

St. Paddy's Turkey Sliders

1 Package of Ground Turkey 1 Cup of Spinach Puree** 1 Small Onion (chopped) any color 4 Fresh Basil leaves (chopped) 1 tsp of Montreal Steak Seasoning (Mc Cormicks) 1/4 Cup of Dried Mushrooms (Porcini, Brazilian and Ivory Portabella)** 15-16 slider buns** Shredded Colby Jack Cheese or slices

Mix your meat, onion, spinach, seasoning, dash of salt and reconstituted mushrooms in a bowl. Heat your fry pan with a little olive oil, make patty's that fit in the palm of your hand, lay them down with nothing in the middle and do not touch until you see the sides turn tan-ish. After 2 minutes flip, yes they will look a little green, place cheese on top and add 1/8 cup of water in the middle of pan, cover even if it is with foil, turn off the heat after 1 min and let rest for 3-5. I dress these baby's with fresh tomato, baby dills, frenchy mustard and top off with a little bestfoods mayo (hellmanns) on the tomato side. Bestfoods and tomatoes together LOVE IT!
**I like to take my fresh spinach and put a little water in a blender to puree it for recipes like this or sauces, that way I never let spinach go bad in the fridge either,
**I buy this mix at Costco it has 6 different mushrooms in the jar, pricey upfront but will save you a lot in the long run.
**I love the dinner rolls by Orowheat

This will make 15-16 nice size sliders, the picture looks big but it was a small plate.

Enjoy,
Ms. Foodie