My Kind of Restaurant!

Arctic Circle Strip July 31, 2015

Hey, *I* loved Enchanted! I'll be singing this all day now:

Kroger Recalls 4 Spices for Salmonella Concerns

No Kroger near me, but for those of you who do shop there:

In a press release Saturday, the grocery store chain announced they are recalling the following products:

• Kroger Bac'n Buds: 12 oz containers
• Kroger Coarse Ground Black Pepper: 17.1 oz containers
• Kroger Ground Cinnamon: 18.3 oz containers
• Kroger Garlic Powder: 24.7 oz containers

Kroger says the products may be contaminated with salmonella and, if eaten, could result in severe illness to those individuals who may consume this product.

Kroger says they have removed the potentially affected items from store shelves and initiated its customer recall notification system that alerts customers who may have purchased recalled Class 1 products through register receipt tape messages and phone calls.

Customers who have purchased the above products should not consume them and should return them to a store for a full refund or replacement.

The recall affects stores in Huntsville, Alabama; Georgia; South Carolina; Auburn, Alabama; Central and Northwest Ohio; Northwestern Virginia panhandle; Michigan; Indiana (except SE Indiana, -Evansville-); Illinois; Eastern Missouri; Greater Memphis area, Tennessee; Arkansas; Mississippi; Western Kentucky; Hopkinsville and Bowling Green, Kentucky; Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee; ; North Carolina; Virginia; Eastern West Virginia; Eastern Kentucky; Southeastern Ohio; Texas and Louisiana; Jay C, Dillons, King Soopers, Fry's, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Smiths.

Read more: http://www.wsmv.com/story/29640099/kroger-announces-recall-of-4-spices-over-salmonella-concerns#ixzz3h87c95SR

Dr. McDougall Finally Loses His Mind Video

Someone on the McDougall forums mentioned this satire video called "Dr. McDougall Finally Loses His Mind" (Not safe for young children):



Hysterical!

Nothing to Do with Food - Just Disney

And I own all but maybe three of these movies. Can you tell I'm a Dis-nerd!?

That's a Lotta Rice!!

I have a problem with rice going rancid, sometimes before I even get it home from the store. I would love to be able to have all the rice types this guy has - and the storage that goes along with it!

I Always DID Love Dennis the Menace!

Most of my allowance as a kid went into buying comic books, and Dennis was one I always got the day it came out!

A Way to Get Kids to Eat McDougall Pancakes

(Sorry for all the edits.The video links were causing me grief for a bit.)


Ignore the recipe the cook uses and try a bit of watered down McDougall-safe pancake recipe, like this one from Heather McDougall:

BANANA PANCAKES – Adapted from McDougall Newsletter, July 2003

These are a favorite breakfast in our home.  They are easy to make, and everyone loves them!  These are wonderful served with a little maple syrup or applesauce. You can make these the night before and you will just need to add a bit more liquid to the mix in the morning.

Preparation Time:  10 minutes
Cooking Time:  10 minutes
Servings:  makes 10-12 pancakes

¾ cup whole wheat pastry flour
¾ cup unbleached white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½  teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1 tablespoon egg replacer mixed in ¼ cup warm water
1 cup non-dairy milk
1 cup sparkling water

To Cook:
Mix the flours, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.  Place the bananas in another bowl and mash well.  (This is about 2 ½ bananas.)  Mix the egg replacer and water and beat until frothy.  Add to bananas and mix well.  Stir in the non-dairy milk and water and mix again.  Pour into the dry ingredients and stir to mix.  Do not over-beat.

Heat a non-stick griddle over medium heat.  Pour mixture by ¼ cup measure onto the dry, heated griddle and flatten with the bottom of your measuring cup.  Flip and turn over when the first bubbles start to appear.  Cook until brown on both sides.  Repeat until all mixture has been used.

Hint:  This makes a delicious, light pancake that rises as it cooks.  For a slightly thinner pancake, (or if you let your batter sit too long before using) thin batter with a little more non-dairy milk, stirring to mix well before ladling onto the griddle.  This may also be made with all whole-wheat flour, but it will be slightly heavier in texture.  These may be refrigerated and heated in the microwave or oven at a later time.  They may also be frozen and heated in a toaster.

Healthy Living with Chef AJ

Healthy Living with Chef AJ

Chef AJ (Well, probably her husband, Charles) is converting those interviews from her site/Charles' YouTube channel, to podcasts available on a service called PodBean. As of this afternoon, the only one I see there is the one she did with Dr. McDougall dated May 2015 on that site
  but is in actuality this interview from October 2014.
 

It'll certainly come in handy for those who haven't learned how to rip audio from a YouTube video yet to add to their MP3 playing devices.

Hmm, looks like you have to go directly to the podcast's web page to download to your computer, although you can play the file from the embedded player.

Barbecue Bean Salad

This is the last of the 4 salads I made. Unlike the other 3 which filled my largest Pyrex container, this one didn't even fill the 6-cup size. Since we had use of our kitchen and sink again there was no need to go back to the store and pray they had decent potatoes and serve this over them for dinners, so we just used it like the leftovers of the others, for lunches, and one night for an after dinner snack.

Barbecue Bean Salad
Servings: 4
Prep time: 10 minutes

2, 15-ounce cans small red beans, rinsed and drained
2 cups frozen corn kernels, thawed
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/3 cup oil-free honey Dijon mustard style salad dressing
1/4 cup barbecue sauce

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and toss well to mix. Serve at once or refrigerate until serving time.

Again, I used the Esselstyn 3-2-1 Dressing, this time mixing it with Thick Bone Sucking Sauce.

I LOVE this stuff! A few months ago we made our first ever trip to Whole Foods, and along with a bunch of sweet potatoes and one of nearly every Engine 2 product the store had, I bought 2 jars of this because everyone who ever wrote about it on-line loved it. Now I know why. My husband plans on taking a day off work in a few weeks so we can make another trip to the store again, and this time I plan on getting no Engine 2 products, even more of those assorted sweet potatoes, and at least 6 jars of this stuff. I have only a fraction of a jar left and have been rationing it for weeks. They just better have it on the shelf when we go or I'll be really disappointed.

And so ends the emergency slew of salads. We were surprised at how much we liked them, although as I wrote yesterday, we were both starting to get really tired of beans and corn, corn and beans. This coming week I plan on making up the recipes I had planned for last week so I can use up the ingredients I bought for them before they go bad. After that? Well, maybe I'll choose a few more of those Mary McDougall salads to try. The Quick and Easy book had a few more I would like to try, and every McDougall book with recipes has a bunch, too. I already have my eyes on some potato salads, a garbanzo bean one, even one made with Italian bread. Hopefully they'll all be as tasty as these turned out to be.

Honey Bean Salad

So far this one is my favorite, probably because it has actual green veggies in it.

I had leftover green beans and wax beans from a previous meal so cut those down to size and used them instead of using canned.

Again, canned beans, drained and rinsed.

And the store had no red onions so I used a small yellow one, sliced very fine.

For the dressing I used the Esselstyn 3-2-1 Dressing with balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard and maple syrup.

It was a very nice, tasty salad, but I'm starting to get tired of all those beans and corn! This, like the other 3, filled my 11-cup Pyrex glass container. We had this for one dinner and for lunched for both of us for another few days. My husband ate his as a side dish to his sandwiches, I had mine over baked sweet potatoes. He poured extra dressing over his, but it was just fine for me.

We're not really salad people, but this is one we both declared a "really good" and I'll be making this one again in the future, especially when the heat goes back up into the 90's. It's only July 4th so there's a lot of summer weather still ahead of us.

Mexican Corn Salad

This is the first one we ate, Mexican Corn Salad.

For the red bell pepper I just used a 4 ounce jar of pimientos. The whole thing came together in less than 5 minutes - the longest step was taking the time to open, drain and rinse the cans of beans. I already had the cilantro chopped from the other recipe. I didn't bother putting the salsa and vinegar in a blender.

As for the kitchen, the pipe has been fixed and the old dishwasher is in the hallway outside the bedroom. I have water back and can access all my cabinets. But I still have a gaping hole in the wall where the dishwasher used to be and live wires from said dishwasher hanging around the open area. The owner also yanked the wires off the garbage disposal. That's another thing that never worked right the whole 15 years we've lived here, and every time we use it water would back up in our downstairs neighbor's kitchen sink, so we don't turn it on. He promises to remove it soon, but we've heard that line for the past 5 years. He also said he's going to replace our leaky kitchen faucet, another job we've been after him for for about 5 years, maybe more. That started leaking about a month after he put it in and he promised then to come up and fix it.  So we're now in limbo, waiting to see what will happen next.

But at least I have water and that half of my kitchen back.

Of the last 2 salads already made, one is being eaten with sweet potatoes for lunch, the other we'll have Sunday, so reports on them soon.

Salad Days

Life interferes with the best laid plans. Besides last Friday's flare-up of my degenerative disc disease causing agonizing pain in my lower back and left hip, and arthritis pain in my left toes making every step painful for the previous 2 weeks, we now have no water in the kitchen. The drain pipe has a 6 inch hole in it, so any water that went down our kitchen sink flooded the apartment beneath us, the apartment beneath that one, and all the way down to the basement. The owner spent 4 hours here the other night, nearly in tears. He usually does all the repairs himself, but this one was a doozy and he felt he needed the help of one of his friends who knows plumbing, but he's unavailable for at least a week. He left our kitchen a mess, including a non-functioning dishwasher (Never worked in the 15 years we're in this apartment) blocking my stove and most of my kitchen cabinets and a pile of soggy, moldy plaster and fiberglass insulation in the space where the dishwasher used to be. Not to mention the gigantic hole in my wall exposing that leaky pipe and soggy wood and insulation. Of course, our water is turned off in the kitchen.

Great. I'm not only having to spend the holiday weekend with no way to cook but it may take as long as 2-3 weeks. I could wash some dishes in a bucket in the bathroom, but of course, would rather not. And most of my pots, dishes, microwave, even some food items, were now unreachable behind the piles of crud and the dishwasher. Thank goodness he came up during dinner so we had a few plates, bowls, and one small pot either in the sink or the dish drainer, so we could use those, along with the one accessible burner on the stove. My son was able to shift the dishwasher enough and with his long arms managed to grab the oatmeal for breakfasts, the toaster so he and hubby could make their toasted bread for lunches, the teapot, so I could make up some McDougall cups for myself for my lunches, and, using one of those grabbers, our medications.

Time to make something new for dinners instead of the planned meals. Mary McDougall has a lot of hearty salad recipes in the McDougall Quick and Easy Cookbook, so the next morning I had my son bring me to the grocery store (My back still hurts too much to drive myself) and grabbed a few items I would need to make a week's worth of salads for dinner. I figured I better make them all right then before plans changed and I had people tearing my kitchen apart for who knows how long. I'm glad we always keep a stash of paper plates, bowls, and plastic utensils handy - and they were on the other side of the kitchen!

Because I was still able to reach one burner of the stove and the one pot we had was the right size, this was the first one I made.

I doubled the recipe because we like to get a few meals out of each recipe.

Here it is, still in the mixing bowl, and when put away, it nearly filled the 11-cup Pyrex:

Since we haven't eaten this yet, all I can say about it is that I really don't like the smell of fresh cilantro. Unfortunately, it's used in more of these recipes and in greater quantities.

More in the next post. For some reason Blogger won't let me insert anymore graphics.