Categories
Creative Cookery

Hand-Held Food: The Perfect Choices for Your Summer Garden Mealtime

Hand-held food is great for summer parties. But there are some tricks of the “trade,” so to speak, you’ll want to keep in imind when crafting the perfect food for your beautiful summer. You might want to provide your family with a beautiful outdoor dining experience a few times a week. Or you might want to invite guests to come and experience your cooking skill on your newly installed outdoor veranda. However, food eaten outside is sometimes a little different than the food you can eat outside on a typical dinner table.

While the food needs to be more convenient, it needn’t be overbearingly difficult to make or be any less flavorful.

In order to experience the best that your kitchen has to offer while dining outside, consider providing family and friends with the following hand-held food items:

hand-held food - pizza

Pizza – The Ultimate Hand-Held Food

Pizza, famously easy to eat anywhere, is amazing to make from scratch but can be challenging to get exactly right. Once you’ve spread your dough, separated the cheese and come up with your own beautiful tomato sauce with a hint of spice, throwing your beautiful creation onto a pizza stone in the oven can lend your pizza the air of Italian authenticity. Stone grilling a pizza is much more preferable to your standard oven because it helps the bread stay more evenly crispy and lends that beautiful char-grilled flavor to the base itself. To help prevent sticking, scatter some corn meal on the stone before placing your pie on it.


Pizza is a great food item to make with your family. In dividing a lot of different ingredients, you can allow your children to place their own toppings. This, in turn, can serve as a fun activity for them. Hopefully, it will spawn the desire for your little ones to be competent cooks as they grow up.

hand-held food - tacos
Flickr

Tacos – Hand-Held Food from South of the Border

Much like pizza, the intrinsically grabbable nature of a taco serves to make it the ultimate convenience food. When you makie the ingredients yourself, you can pull together some very flavorful options. For the perfect salsa, I’d recommend:

  • a small crushed garlic clove,
  • a squeeze of lime juice,
  • chopped coriander,
  • eight tomatoes peeled and chopped,
  • around a full onion also chopped very finely,
  • vinegar and
  • seasoning.

For a little taste of something different that really works, consider chopping two tablespoons of pineapple to bring out that citrus bite.

The only problem you’ll have with tacos is that they are so ‘more-ish,’ you’re likely to be all out while the guests satiate their hunger and beyond.

hand-held food - skewers and kabobs

Skewers – Hand-Held Food on a Stick

Never fear, if worried about children, you can find wooden skewers with ease that can be snipped at the end to prevent any sharp end injuries from occurring. Aside from that, using skewers to help cook various meats and cheeses, such as chorizo and halloumi, lightly seasoned with pepper and a very, very tiny sprinkle of rosemary can make for the perfect and most convenient appetizer. These can serve as a perfect side accessory to your main dish, and can also be happily used to mop up any of the salsa left over from your taco’s.

These foods, well made, should bring your family a beautiful mealtime worth remembering.

Categories
Taste Tests

Product Review: Newman’s Complete Skillet Meal for Two

Newman's Own pasta
Newman’s Own Chicken Parmigiana & Penne with a side salad

A few weeks ago I received some coupons for various Newman’s Own products in the RedPlumb weekly flyer, so I decided to give the products a try.

newmans-own2On Monday, I tried out the Supreme Thin & Crispy pizza. I was dubious about it because I prefer my pizza crusts to be thick and bread-y. To be honest, the crust wasn’t too bad, it was just crispier than I prefer. But what lost it for me was the spiciness of the pepperoni — I went to bed with an upset stomach. I’ve never tasted pepperoni so hot!

newmans-own1Then, last night my boyfriend and I tried out the Complete Skillet Meal for Two in the Chicken Parmigiana & Penne flavor. You’ll see how I served it with a side salad and Parmesan cheese above.

World of difference! I would totally recommend this product. It took all of 10 minutes to prepare. The chicken was tasty. The penne was just the right amount of al dente. And the sauce was perfection — and I’m not crazy about tomato-based sauces!

This is a perfect meal for two if you get creative and add on a side or two. I chose to serve it with salad (recipe below) and top it with a mix of Parmesan, Romano and Asiago cheeses. My boyfriend was surprised at how quickly I pulled together a delicious and elegant meal. Thanks Newman’s Own!

== Carma’s Quick Salad ==

1 bag of butter lettuce
1/4 chopped red onion
1/2 cup shredded cheese
1/4-1/2 cup Ranch dressing

In a large container with a lid — a Rubbermaid or Tupperware works (I use a recycled, large lunch meat container) — add in the lettuce, onion and cheese. Close the lid and shake well.

Open the container and add in the salad dressing. Close and shake until well mixed.

Serve in bowls.

Optional garnishes: Parmesan cheese, cilantro or diced green onion.


You can find a good container for mixing salads on Amazon.com. See suggestions here:

Categories
Recipes

Quick and easy pizza bake – with substitutions

Impossibly Easy Pizza Bake
The first month of the year brings an easy, family-pleasing dish from Betty Crocker.
For several years now, I’ve had the annual tradition of proudly hanging the Betty Crocker calendar on my wall. I love the lush photography and reading the fun recipes. But I rarely ever make them … just drewl and think about it.

Well, this year is different. I’ve promised myself that I will make all 12 recipes this year and last night I made my version of January’s recipe: Impossibly Easy Pizza Bake.

Here’s what my experience was:

1. The recipe calls for pepperoni, which doesn’t agree with me … so instead I substituted sausage. I browned a package of Farmer John’s mild pork breakfast sausage and used that.

2. The recipe is so easy and only took about 10-15 minutes to prepare, and it only took that long because I used a can of pasta sauce instead of a jar of pizza sauce (extra time to open a can compared to a jar) and I grated my own cheese rather than purchase it already grated (extra time to grate the cheese).

3. It took a little longer to bake than suggested, but that may be my oven. I’ve found that to be a trend.

4. Absolutely delicious — I had three pieces last night for dinner and another for brunch today. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

Notes on Bringing Kitchen Creativity to Your Home

Did you notice how I followed the spirit of the recipe but still made it mine? You can do that, too. Here’s my thought process in modifying this recipe.

1. Switched out pepperoni for sausage.
This is a pizza bake, right? What other toppings go on pizza besides pepperoni? I like sausage, so I used that. But you could put any of your favorite toppings instead. I’m thinking of adding broccoli, olives and/or sun-dried tomatoes next time.

2. Switched out a jar of pizza sauce for a can of pasta sauce.
Frankly, I just couldn’t find a jar of pizza sauce when I went out. But you could use any kind of sauce that you like on pizza — it doesn’t even have to be tomato based! A nice pesto sauce would have worked well, too.

3. Grated my own cheese.
Cheese is cheese and it doesn’t matter who grates it — you or the manufacturer. I did use mozzarella, but I could have used any kind of melt-y cheese I wanted, such as jack, cheddar or gouda, for that matter!

When you think of recipes as guidelines and make substitutions in a parallel fashion, you can begin to gain confidence in your ability to apply your creativity in the kitchen.

One more note, I’m lactose intolerant, so I rarely have cow’s milk in my home. So, in this recipe I used unsweetened vanilla almond milk and it turned out fine. Now, there are cases where non-dairy milk won’t work, so be careful with this kind of substitution.

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