Tofu: Not as scary as it sounds...

In my effort to change our eating habits, I have befriended an ingredient previously looked upon as totally gross. I've tried tofu several times before, many years ago, but I never enjoyed it. Now that I've done some research and experimented with this strange food I've come to actually like it. If you've ever had a discussion about tofu with a tofu-eating friend, they no doubt told you that tofu tastes like whatever you cook it with. Well, that's a true statement. Tofu alone is quite bland and for someone who tends to eat very strong flavors, it's like eating unflavored marshmallows. But for me, it's not just the lack of flavor. It's the texture that makes me go, Eww!

The gross factor, I guess, comes partly from the name and partly from the texture. The word, TOFU, looks and sounds like either a word I'd get soap in my mouth for saying or the latest clothing line from a hip hop artist. The texture reminds me of those molded desserts where the Jello is mixed with whipped cream and that's one of those foods that everyone seems to love, but me.

My tricks to eating tofu are to extract as much water as possible, over season it and always use the firm or extra firm for meals. Desserts, like cheesecake, can be successfully made with the soft or silken tofu but I have yet to cowgirl-up to that.

Making tofu requires a process similar to cheese making but no dairy is involved. The soy beans are crushed and heated, separating the liquid (soy milk) from the solids (curds) and then the curds are pressed tightly together into blocks of tofu. The only thing added to the bean curd when making tofu is Nigari. Nigari is the powder form of magnesium chloride that results from removing the sodium chloride and evaporating the water from seawater. Nigari is used because of its natural ability to make everything jell together.

Tofu is a great meat alternative for anyone on a vegetarian, vegan or dairy free diet due to the high quality protein, calcium (from the Nigari) and B vitamins it contains. Tofu has zero cholesterol and is low in sodium and calories. I'd like to share a recipe that even tofu haters will like. It's a variation on my sweet and tangy homemade BBQ sauce but with a bit of Asian flair and a much faster cooking time.

Sweet and Tangy Tofu

8 ounces firm or extra firm tofu
4 Tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
2 Tablespoons ketchup
2 Tablespoons brown sugar (I use dark)
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 Tablespoons Thai sweet chili sauce (or regular chili sauce)
1 dash cayenne (optional)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 Tablespoon sesame seeds
2 green onions, sliced
2 cups hot cooked rice (I prefer short grain brown rice)

Start your rice cooking per package instructions on the stove or in a rice cooker. Line a small plate with a double layer of folded paper towels. Lay the block of tofu on the paper towels and cover with more folded paper towels. Place another plate on top and weigh it down with a heavy skillet or a heavy canned food item. This squeezes out the excess water in the tofu. Let it sit while you prepare the sauce. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, ketchup, brown sugar, dry mustard, cider vinegar, chili sauce and cayenne. Set aside. Slice the tofu into 1/4 inch thick slices and then cut those slices into squares about 1-inch in size. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the tofu slices a couple minutes on each side so they are a golden brown. Remove to a plate and set aside. To the pan, add the garlic and cook just until it's fragrant but not burned. Pour in the sauce ingredients and the sesame seeds; cook and stir a couple minutes or until it begins to thicken. Return the tofu slices to the pan and stir gently to coat. Serve over hot rice and sprinkle with green onion slices.
Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes
Serves 4

A super bowl for the Super Bowl!

I've been gearing up for the football season's ultimate match up, Super Bowl XLIV, on February 7th. This year I'll be serving some of our favorite standard recipes along with a few new ones.

Of course appetizers are always big on the menu for Super Bowl Sunday. Anything that can be eaten in one bite, with the hands or while jumping up and down screaming at the television, without making a mess, is potential Super Bowl fare. This year I have a menu of old stand-by recipes as well as some new ones to try. I have a large group of friends and family that are always willing to be guinea pigs for new recipes so I never have to worry about how a new one will be received. They all know that at any time I may serve up a new creation and I'm more than happy to hear how everyone feels about it.

My son's girlfriend had dinner with us a few nights ago, for the first time. We didn't know in advance that she'd be here, but I never let anyone leave my house hungry. Unfortunately, since it wasn't planned, dinner consisted of a mishmash of recipes that had been invented or significantly altered from the first time we had it, so I made sure she understood that if she didn't like something I don't expect her to eat it. This has always been the Food Rule at my house. "If you don't like it, don't eat it." But if you can tell me why you get bonus points for helping me create a better version and/or properly rate the recipe. The veggies were dubbed, "A little weird." by my son and pretty much echoed around the table, but everyone liked the Japanese inspired salmon. Later I apologized to Nick for not having a normal meal planned that night and he put my mind at ease by explaining that he'd already warned her that I pull random recipes out of my.... Well, never mind. She wasn't scared off and I just may have gained another willing recipe tester.

So, here I am searching appetizer recipes for the Super Bowl when I find a recipe for a dip bowl. I love using interesting and sometimes edible food bowls for dips. Hollowed out sweet peppers for vegetable dip, grapefruit or oranges for fruit dip and French bread rounds for spinach dip. The presentation factor alone is worth it, but the likelihood that the kids will try it goes up a notch too. This new idea was to make the dip bowl out of snack mix. I didn't have any actual snack mix on hand but I had a lot of Chex cereal leftover from making homemade white chocolate snack mix at Christmas. This was a perfect way to test the recipe before the big day and use up the cereal that won't get eaten by itself. I filled the Edible Snack Bowl with this BLT Dip recipe I've been making for about 12 years. Originally found in the Taste of Home magazine but altered to fit my family's tastes, and we had a fun snack that ended up taking the place of dinner one night.

BLT Dip

1 cup (8oz) sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup (4oz) shredded cheese (we like the Mexican blend of 4 cheeses)
4 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 pound bacon

Trim the large areas of fat from the bacon then dice the meat & add to a large fry pan. Cook and stir until the bacon is nearly crisp. Remove bacon to a plate lined with a couple paper towels to drain the grease. Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, cover and refrigerate until serving time. Serve with cut veggies, crackers or small pieces of sourdough bread. Yield: 3 cups.

It’s going to be another chilly January day. The wind is howling through the backyard, banging the playhouse shutters, rearranging outdoor furniture and reminding me that I may have one too many sets of wind chimes out there. This is the perfect day for homemade soup! My favorite combination is a bowl of tomato soup paired with a grilled cheese sandwich. Such a comforting meal and both can be made extra special with these homemade recipes. For tonight’s dinner I’ll be making a super easy tomato soup that has several dimensions of flavor. No canned soup can compare and because it’s made with common ingredients it’s quick and easy. My favorite grilled cheese bread is made with V-8 vegetable juice. It does require a bit of time for mixing and rising, but the flavor is outstanding plain or in a sandwich. Brighten this winter with soups that warm the heart as well as the tummy!

Homemade Tomato Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped bell peppers

1/2 cup chopped celery

1 (15oz) can diced fire-roasted tomatoes

1 (15oz) can tomato sauce

2 cups chicken stock

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 tablespoon sugar (optional)



Heat the olive oil over med heat. Add onions, bell pepper, celery and sauté until soft (7-10 minutes). Add tomatoes, sauce, chicken stock, bay leaf, salt, pepper and sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. If soup is too thick, add water to desired consistency. Total time: 30 minutes

Serves 4



V-8 Bread

2 cups V-8 vegetable juice

2 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon basil, scant

1 teaspoon oregano, scant

1/4 cup ketchup

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

1/4 cup warm water

1 (2-1/4 teaspoons) package yeast

7 cups all-purpose flour



In small bowl, combine warm water and yeast. Set aside. Heat V-8 Juice and butter until butter is melted. Add sugar, salt, herbs, ketchup, and cheese. Cool to lukewarm. In large bowl (I use a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment) measure 3 cups of flour then add yeast mixture and lukewarm tomato mixture. Beat until smooth. Gradually add more flour (approx. 4 cups) until you have soft, workable dough. Knead 8 to 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Place in greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled (1 1/2 hours). Punch dough down and divide in half. Cover and let rest 10 minutes. Shape into two loaves and place in well greased loaf pans. Cover and let rise until doubled again (1 hour). Bake at 350° for 25 to 35 minutes.

Yield: 2 loaves

Blue Moon





This New Year's Eve was a special one for me. It's special for a couple reasons, actually. I'll admit that I'm not the horn-blowing, champagne-clinking, fella-smoochin' type. I rarely stay up late enough to see Dick Clark do the countdown. In fact, the last time I rang-in the New Year was for the millennium. Although I was not prepared for the Y2K catastrophe, I felt the need to stay awake for one if it should happen.

This year, ten years later, I began to get excited about having some drinks & ringing in the New Year for real. 2009 wasn't a good year for us financially & I was really ready to say goodbye to it. We spent the evening with good family friends, eating steak & shrimp, drinking happy drinks, playing Rock Band, singing bad karaoke (although I began to sound better as the night waned on), blowing horns, throwing confetti & counting down.

The other reason this year was special was because there was a blue moon.
The second full moon in a month is called a blue moon. December 31, 2009's blue moon was coupled with a partial lunar eclipse & the next time a blue moon will fall on a New Year's Eve will be in the year 2028. At that time a full lunar eclipse will occur. I'm usually an Absolut vodka gal, but in this case I needed to bring a gluten free vodka. Amazingly, I found a gluten free vodka made right here in Idaho out of our famous Idaho russet potatoes.
To celebrate, I made & enjoyed a version of a drink from Blue Ice American Vodka. The original recipe is called a Blue Ghost but I changed it up a bit & renamed it to fit the occasion. This drink is smooth & so beautiful! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!


Blue Moon Special
1 1/4 ounces blue ice american vodka
1 ounce blue curacao
4 ounces Sprite (or 7-Up)
1 lime (a squeeze for drink & a slice for garnish)
1/2 cup crushed ice

Fill a 6-8 oz glass with crushed ice.
Add vodka, Curacao & soda.
Give the lime a squeeze over the drink.
Garnish with a slice of lime & serve.

For the love of honey... or, I can Can-Can!

Maybe it's coming from a crafty family, or just me, but I've always loved homemade gifts. As a kid I enjoyed them but I'm not sure I really appreciated them properly until I started making them myself. Of course, some of the best homemade gifts are edible. So when I came across a recipe called Love Honey, I knew it would make a great gift.

I've always wanted to learn how to can and preserve my own food. There's just been one little thing holding me back...I'm scared. Scared of the equipment, scared of the hot water and most of all I’m scared of glass jars exploding in hot water! Luckily, this recipe did not require anything but a jar with a screw-top lid. We went right to the store so I could purchase the required jars and get started. The choosing of the jars was a little more complicated than I had imagined. We found two styles that seemed small enough, based on the fact that one recipe makes one cup of honey, and both pretty in their own way. Since I photograph everything and want the product to show through the glass, we opted for the smooth-glass with an interesting shape instead of the fancier etched glass jar.

Upon returning home and opening the package of jars to sterilize them I realized, with extreme horror, that we'd accidentally bought jars that don't have screw on lids, but actual canning lids! It was late at night (when all my good ideas come to me... like painting the kitchen purple) and I'd already torn off the cardboard box, so now I felt obligated to use them. The torn packaging, when pieced back together, had minimal instructions for the canning process.

A couple years ago I came across a recipe for Banoffee Pie. I love the holiday movie, set in Great Britain, titled Love Actually. And in it there is a scene about banoffee pie. I wonder every time I see it just what is banoffee pie? Well, here it was and I almost felt silly when I found out it was simply banana and toffee. I had to make it, of course. I remember making toffee in high school Spanish by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk on a hotplate so I figured this would be just as simple. Well, it is when you don't forget about the 4 cans on the stove. Apparently, it's like running your car without replenishing the oil. When you let all the water boil out you get exploding cans. They didn't spray all over the kitchen, but were horribly disfigured and I was only able to get enough caramel out of the three I could open (scraping around the blackened areas) to make one of the two pies. My favorite large pot, in breast cancer pink, was ruined. The pie tasted amazing, so all was not lost, but the fear of ruining another pot was something that dawned on me now as I stared at these canning jars.

I've already spent many hours online researching canning methods, recipes, rules and especially the dangers, so I felt more or less the same about doing it as I had in the past. The difference now was I had the jars and the product sitting in front of me. I didn't have the canning pot or the special tongs but even so, I decided it was time to face my fears and finish what I'd started.

I winged it according to the simple instructions on the box and using my largest non-stick Dutch oven for the boiling water bath. The most trouble I had was not having tongs that would grip the wide mouthed, 2-inch tall jars. I used two pancake spatulas to pick up and lift (juggle) the jars out of the boiling water. I don't recommend this method however, it worked.

According to the recipe we now leave the honey to cure for three or four weeks. Luckily, my math skills are far below my writing skills so we ended up with at least two and a half cups of honey leftover after filling the four canning jars. This I poured over a double batch of spices in an old pasta sauce jar and planned on keeping and testing myself. The honey has become my number one favorite flavoring in everything from oatmeal to coffee (instead of cream and sugar). I can't wait until Christmas so I can get the reactions of my family. The flavor seems to mellow as it cures, but it comes on sweet followed by a potpourri of holiday spices and then finishes with a perfectly melded flavor.
This recipe is so easy but is really something special. I hope you give it a try!

UPDATE: 1/14/2010
Email from a friend: "I really liked the honey. I had it on my oatmeal and it had just the right amount of sweetness and the spices were mellow and not overwhelming, a lovely blend of both sweet and spice. When things are too spicy I get heartburn, but this didn't come close. I'm still looking forward to toast with it."

It's called stuffing for one reason....

There are many discussions on the internet as to whether it's called stuffing or dressing, but as I read through the histories and opinions of each author I formed a theory of my own. It's called stuffing because I can't help but stuff myself with it. Sure, I'll have a bite of turkey on my plate, some mashed potatoes and gravy, maybe even some veggies, but those are all just for show. If it wouldn't look strange, I'd just leave the bird frozen and serve up stuffing every year. I've never actually felt the desire to call it dressing either. I'm sure it's all in how we're raised, tomato/tomatoe, but even so, I can't recall one time when I've seen anyone lean back from the table, loosen their waistband and happily sigh, "Ah, I'm dressed!"
When I was young I loved the holidays at grandma and grandpa’s house. Grandma made the best stuffing ever! Until I found out what it was made of. I know a gizzard and a few kidneys shouldn't change my opinion of it but I've got a squeamish side. I wasn’t about to give up on my stuffing habit though, so I went on the search for a perfectly turkey-less turkey stuffing. After several years of acceptable, but similar, recipes I found one in the Christmas 1997 issue of the Taste of Home magazine. Over the years it has evolved into my version below, which has become a staple on our holiday table. Don’t be afraid of the rye bread. The 3 to 1 ratio of light to dark rye creates a balance that doesn’t overpower the dish, it’s just enough that friends and family recognize it as something extra special you've done with your stuffing. Feel free to substitute all light rye if the dark is too strong for your family’s tastes and any apple is fine, but I personally prefer the crunch and tartness of the granny smith. It has lots of flavor, lots of texture and is good stuffed or baked alongside the turkey. I hope you enjoy this as much as my friends and family do!

Rye Bread Stuffing
1 lb day-old light rye bread, cubed
1/2 lb day-old dark rye bread, cubed
1 lb Jimmy Dean brand sage flavored sausage
1 1/2 cups chopped onions
2 large granny smith apples, peeled and chopped
1 cup chopped celery
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup chopped pecans (optional)
2 tablespoons fresh minced Italian parsley (or dried parsley flakes)
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 teaspoons dried thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons rubbed sage
3/4 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
3-3 1/2 cups chicken broth

Instructions: Toss bread cubes in a large bowl. In a skillet, cook and crumble sausage just until cooked through. Remove to paper towels to drain. To same skillet, add onion, apples, celery, garlic and butter. Saute until apples and vegetables are tender. Add both the onion mixture and sausage to bread. Add nuts (if desired), seasonings and enough broth to moisten. Cover and refrigerate until ready to bake; stuff turkey just before baking. Bake any additional stuffing separately in a greased 2 quart casserole dish. Or bake all stuffing separately in a greased 13x9x2 baking dish. To bake stuffing separately, place in greased dish, cover and bake at 325 degrees for one hour; uncover and bake for 10 minutes longer.
Serves 10-12 (11 cups of stuffing)
Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 70 minutes

Well, it's October again and that means its breast cancer awareness month. No doubt we've all been affected by cancer in some way. I've lost two friends, one in real life (Dec 2005) and one online (Oct 2009) to breast cancer. I don't want this to feel like a depressing column though. Both of these women were positive about their fate and honest about their experiences. They found a way to let others into their hearts to share the laughing, smiling or crying. Simond and Ellie will be greatly missed but the marks they made on our hearts will always be with us.

Every October on Recipezaar we tag recipes to make that have the word pink in the title or contain a pink ingredient. I've made several already and have another 5 to go.... for now. I'm sure I'll keep tagging more recipes throughout the month but we definitely started off with some real treats. We had a drink to toast the courageous women who battle this disease every day and a bright and cheerfully unique cheesecake.

Pink Daiquiris



Pink Lemonade Cheesecake