Once you taste these unique candied pecans, you’ll be making them over and over again. And although you will be tempted to make a double or triple batch, it is best to make 1 cup at a time. Immediately as they are coming out of the oven, you need to get them onto a sheet of foil and separate them carefully and quickly, or you’ll have one big ball of pecans that will have to be chopped to get apart. Yes, they would still taste delish, but they don’t look so nice when they aren’t individual pecan halves. So avoid that temptation, because unless you’re a Tanzanian Devil, you just can’t move that fast!

Once again you are getting two recipes for the price of one! When you remove the pecans from the oven, there will be small pools of caramel left on the foil. They will harden and dry quickly. Once they are cool enough to handle, peel them off the foil and save. You can use them to make a fabulous vinaigrette, which you can use for a wonderful salad, with or without the pecans.

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Here is the salad I made at the Valley Dish show yesterday. I created it especially for Tram after I was on the last time and made crisp mozzarella slices to go with a risotto dish. She’d mentioned that she loved the crisp warm cheese and I asked if she’d had warm goat cheese done the same way. She said that she had and would love to learn how to make it, this is how this salad came to be. I’m sure most of you have had something similar while dining out.  It is easy and delicious to re-create at home. Eliminate the shredded chicken to make a lovely vegetarian main-course salad. Here is THE LINK to the intro for the segment I was on, the salad and pudding making are not up, so this is just a bit of a tease.

Tip: One of the best tips around; use dental floss to slice the goat cheese. It makes a perfectly clean cut, something a knife just can not do!

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This is part 2 of our recipe that began with yesterday’s slow-roasted tomatoes and the tomato water produced from seeding the tomatoes.

The sandwiches are rather complex, for a sandwich, anyhow. The various components may be used separately for a huge range of different dishes. Use the dressing for a salad or pasta; the chicken will stand on its own or maybe chopped into a salad or pasta, and the peaches are fabulous on their own or chopped into a salad or topped with ice cream for a sweet and savory dessert. Plus those tomatoes from yesterday … well the sky is the limit with those beauties!

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This is dinner #2 using the shredded chicken from the post two days ago. I like to serve this salad a little warm/a little cold, pretty much at room temperature. When you get home from work, running the kids around, the gym, whatever it is you’re racing in the door from; throw the potatoes in the pot.

Then change your clothes or get the kids set up with their homework, or whatever it is that needs to be done pronto. Then drain the potatoes and set them aside.

Next, in between doing all the things that get in the way of concentrating on making dinner, stop and make the vinaigrette and set it aside. And then when you’re ready to assemble it all; just slice the potatoes, and throw it all together in a bowl and dinner is on that table before you know it.

Please be sure to get one of those people, who always need to be fed, to set the table. I honestly hope you’re not doing that and making dinner, put those kids and husbands to work!

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I feel like a fraud, an imposter, a poser. Only a couple of days ago I came to learn that I had not posted one of my favorite foods on this site in more than 325 posts. Then when I finally do get a recipe up for cheesecake, I have to learn from a dear friend, neighbor, and faithful follower that today is National Cheesecake Day. How do I not know this already!? Out of all the foods that have a “National Day”, and there are about 475 foods that do, National Cheesecake Day is the one that I would actually honor.

For a full list, go to this LINK to check out when your favorite food is honored. (Disclaimer- I have no idea if this is THE official list, but it is what Google found for me) Or find out what food is honored on your special day. I just discovered that my birthday is National Potato Day – love it! Now I’m thinking that when I am not inspired to make something, I’ll just go to this list and make whatever food is “National” that day.  Good idea, or bad? I guess it depends if that day falls on January 8 (good!) or November 24 (bad!).

The recipe here can be configured in any way that best suits your needs. I love to make individual cheesecakes and use them for a salad course. You can purchase the pan HERE to make these little cuties yourself. As is, the recipe makes 24 individual cheesecakes to use as a first course or salad, plus a 6-inch appetizer cheesecake to be served with toasted baguette slices or crackers. Or it will make one full-size 9-inch savory cheesecake. It can also be cut in half to make just one 6-inch cheesecake.

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A little more than a month ago I told you about the boatload of oregano I dried… well now I’m using it up! This makes me happy for so many reasons. Happy to not have to go to the grocery store and pay outrageous prices for dried herbs. Happy with the taste and quality of my oregano straight from my own little garden. And happy to just recently learn that the name oregano is derived from the Greek, meaning “mountain of joy”.  There you go, no wonder I’m happy and joyful about my fantastic oregano bounty. Oregano is an indispensable ingredient in Greek cuisine so here we have a salad where the joyful herb is a star and lights up the dish.

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One of my many favorite things from Costco is their large bag of sugar snap peas. It’s nearly impossible for me to walk through the cold produce room without snagging a bag!  And it is really c-o-l-d in that room. I see people shivering and little kids in shopping carts whining to their parents about it.  I linger, take my time and try to soak it up! I’m the same way at shopping malls and movie theaters. Other people (including my dear daughter, Marissa) endlessly complain and even plan ahead and bring along sweaters to warm their little bones. It’s 110 degrees outside and they are carrying a sweater! And they say I’m the crazy one, go figure.  But I digress – in that sweet produce room, I get my bag of sugar snap peas (and it’s a really big bag!) come home and either eat them raw and straight from the bag as a snack or cook them up into an “easy-breezy” worthy dish such as this.

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Each Thursday this summer during kids’ classes, the menu is vegetarian. It’s a healthy note to end each series of classes. And by Thursday, all the students are well versed in slicing and dicing. The past two weeks it was also a nice and colorful note because on Wednesday the theme was ‘breads and sandwiches”.  Talk about a monotone plate – all white, beige, and brown – didn’t turn out to be as eye-appealing as one might wish for. This pretty “confetti” speckled side dish would help brighten up any old dull sandwich plate.

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A photographer, I am not! I know this, and I accept it. And if you stop by here often, then I am guessing you know and accept it too.  Sometimes I just can’t get the correct light or am unable to correct the light and color in Photoshop. I’ve never taken a Photoshop course and really only know a couple of quick tricks out of the whole big program. Marissa and I signed up for a community college photography night class five years ago when she was a senior in high school. We quickly discovered that the instructor wasn’t really organized enough to teach. Being the great example-setting mom that I am, after only two very disappointing classes, I turned it into girls-night-out for shopping and dinner instead. Hmm?

Imagine this blog without food pictures, even mediocre pictures. Hard to do, at least for me. So I take on average between 6 and 10 shots of each picture I want to feature and hope for the best. That didn’t work out so well for today. I took 9 different shots of this broccoli last night. Then we had it for dinner.  This morning, I downloaded the photos and every single one is out of focus! It sure didn’t look that way on the camera screen last night. Please forgive me, I still want to post the recipe because it was really good, but I won’t go to the store to buy more broccoli just to get a focused picture.

On a happier note; at the same time that Maris and I signed up for the photography class, we also signed up for a weekend watercolor class. I think there were five other women in there and Maris and I were, by far, the youngest… and the least talented! I mean, we were awful! And please keep in mind, that my son, Connor is a great artist! That is one of his many watercolors above, which he did when he was 11 years old. We came home each week with our pitiful “art” and I do not know how he kept a straight face. But we stuck with it! And we had fun. It helped that our instructor was very sweet and encouraging even though it was obvious that neither of us was getting any better. If you’re interested in seeing my talented son’s artwork, you can check out some of his work at this link. Most of the art posted here is done with a Pen Pad and his computer. Plus there are a few photographs of some of his oils as well. Hope you enjoy the broccoli and the art.

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On Sunday, my friend and neighbor, Ronnie had a party to introduce and welcome new neighbors to “the hood”.  She made this colorful fresh and flavorful salad that we all went crazy for. It is inspired by a recipe she found in a cookbook by Rick Rodgers.

I had two servings, and would have had a third if I could have gotten away with it! The original recipe called for 3 ears of corn to be roasted on a grill. This simple take on that uses frozen roasted corn kernels found at Trader Joe’s.  One medium cob of corn yields about 3/4 cup of kernels. So that is convenience item number one.  

And here is number two … a new way to freeze and store chipotle peppers. As you know, chipotle peppers are sold in cans and they are packed in adobo sauce. The sauce is just about as good as the peppers themselves, spicy and smokey and just so addictive. I can’t think of a time when you would use an entire  7-ounce can of peppers. Recipes most often call for just a few peppers and then you have the rest of the can to deal with. In the past, I have placed the remaining peppers on a small greased baking sheet, frozen them, then removed the frozen peppers and placed them in ziplock bags to freeze. But now… I have an even better way. In the majority of recipes the peppers are very finely chopped, so why not freeze them that way?

First place all the remaining peppers and all the adobo sauce left in the can in a food processor and puree it. Next, carefully spoon the puree into the little holes of an empty garlic cube package. What is a garlic cube package, you ask. In a prior post, I told you how much I love to use the minced garlic cubes sold at Trader Joe’s. My freezer is full of them… so I reuse those empty containers and now I always have chipotle cubes on hand too.  One chipotle cube equals about 1/2 chipotle pepper. Plus they pop out just as easily as the garlic does.

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