Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Cranberry Salad

Mixing up a big helping of cranberry salad provides a much needed break from indulgent foods and cheese and sausage we eat here in Wisconsin, but like cheese and sausage, cranberries are a food of the Badger State- and a healthy food too! Cranberries and spinach provide antioxidants, vitamin C, and fiber just to name a few of the health benefits. Walnuts contain omega-three fatty acids, and blue cheese- well, it's still cheese- but since the blue stuff is so strong in flavor you can use less of it compared to more mild cheese. So believe it or not, you can eat Wisconsin and still eat healthy! Click "continue reading" to see the recipe.

Croutons

Croutons are a great way to use up leftover bread. When I have a partial loaf of italian bread about to go stale, or a random extra hamburger bun, or the heals of the bread that are sitting around uneaten, I just toss them in the freezer. These bread orphans, that would have otherwise ended up in the trash, can live in the freezer until I find another use for them. The uses for leftover bread are endless! Leftover bread is perfect for some quick homemade bread crumbs, stuffing, or my favorite- homemade croutons!

My only precaution- sometimes the bread in the freezer situation gets a bit out of hand.  Click "continue reading" to see the recipe and the crazy amount of bread that piled up in my freezer.

Favorite Recipes 2010 - Part 2

More favorite recipes! Drum roll please...here are the top 5 Edible Antics recipes of 2010.  I want to say a big thank you to all of the readers out there.  I also want to thank Cristie for starting such a fantastic blog and I'm excited to be the new captain of this tasty ship.  I have some great ideas for 2010 so keep checking back! If you are reading this, now is a good time to comment and introduce yourself since I might not have met all of the Edible Antics readers yet.  See you next year!

 

 

Wine And Tapas Party Is One More Fun Thing To Do In Wisconsin; Not Potluck - It's Gourmet Food!

Looking for more fun things to do in Wisconsin this summer? Here's something fun you can do anywhere, any time: hold a wine and tapas party. This past weekend, friends gathered at the wine and tapas party held every few months in my neighborhood.

This Wisconsin wine and tapas party originated with someone who wanted a small, intimate party of friends who would gather to share different wines and seriously critique them. Each guest was asked to bring a bottle of a certain type of wine and some food. No kids invited! That was the rule. The conversation, wine, and food would be haute gourmet!

Well, free a bunch of adults from the demands of young children for an evening, set out bottles of wine and a tapas selection of gourmet food and any hopes of seriousness go flying with the pigs. The adults were having fun!

So much fun that as the wine and tapas party roamed through the neighborhood over the ensuing months, the party grew larger and larger. Neighbors invited more and more neighbors to join in the fun. The bottles on the kitchen counters got more numerous and the food went from ordinary potluck to gourmet food. Nowhere in site was a Cheerio, goldfish, chicken nugget, or even cheese pizza. Instead, this weekend we feasted on shrimp, freshly-caught, smoked and grilled lake-fish, crackers with melted goat cheese, bacon, and herbs, and of course, muchas comidas caliente-Mexicana! (I've not been the only chili-deprived parent.)

I also broughtt something my children would abhor. I brought broccoli and cauliflower salad. Keep reading for the recipe.

Wisconsin-Winter Food Dreams: Cucumber Salad Recipe Defies Ice Dam

Jimmy the Ground Hog in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin said spring would come early in Wisconsin. And it is. Lately, we've had days of 33 degrees on which kids descend coat-less from the school bus exclaiming, "It's so WARM!" A few birds are tentatively singing. And when the snow falls, some of it even melts. But this melting is not all good at the end of this Wisconsin winter. Melting means that the snow which melted into water must now go somewhere. And when the snow on the roof melts, where will this new rooftop river run when the gutters remain packed with 9" of ice? This ice dam is too high for the water to surmount, so instead that water flows through the roof and runs down the inside walls of the house. A waterfall right in the house. Such is the stuff of dreams.

Time for a food dream, - a summer food dream. It's the only path past winter frustration. Must dream of food symbolizing summer. Must make summer salads. Must make herbed Greek salad with cucumbers! Read on for the recipe.

Back To Eating Healthy Foods Again; Recipe For Cauliflower Broccoli Salad With Apples And Cranberries

Valentine's Day is past. Mardis Gras is over. The last of my chocolate cakes have been eaten. Time to get back to eating healthy foods again. It's the boom and bust cycle of affluent eating. We can afford to eat fattening, tasty foods so we do. Then we regret that we did so we resolve to eat healthy foods... again. A lot of us made this resolution on January 1st. But by February 1st, we'd slipped. Yet how could we help it? Valentine's Day is a whole day dedicated to eating chocolate. Mardis Gras is a whole night dedicated to eating in excess absolutely everything we want. The holidays and advertisers conspire against us...And now, here's Lent. For Christian believers, Lent is 40 days of back on the wagon of healthy living. But not to despair, chocolate Easter bunnies are coming. In the meantime however, we need healthy foods that also taste good.

My first contribution to this post-Mardis Gras season is this recipe for cauliflower broccoli salad with apples and raisins, except as usual, I substituted cranberries for the raisins. Cranberries are a super-food that's super healthy. But more to the point, I love cranberries. Keep reading for the recipe.

Wisconsin Restaurant Chefs' Recipes For Spinach Salad, Wisconsin Wild Rice And Steak Pay-Off Baby-Sitter

Uh-oh, it's Martin Luther King Jr. day. No school for the kids. Who will watch them while I'm at work? Time to call in the calvary. Time to call Dad! Yes, last night my Chicago father drove to Wisconsin to care for his grandchildren today. This loved and welcomed sitter comes cheap. I don't pay him by the hour, or pay his gas money. I reward him with steak, spinach salad, and a medley of Wisconsin wild rice. And the great thing is, he's happy about the pay. That's because I've been learning to cook. And I'm learning from some great Wisconsin chefs.

I found a better spinach salad recipe than the one I'd used for years. This one's called Spinach Salad with Hazelnut Vinaigrette and is served at the Stout Lodge, Island of Happy Days in Mikana, Wisconsin. Grace Howaniec reprinted the recipe in her collection of recipes from excellent Wisconsin restaurants. Her cookbook is called Encore Wisconsin in the hopes that you and I will be able to reproduce these marvelously delicious dishes at home. The chefs represented in this cookbook demonstrate their flare to cooking in their creative choices of ingredients. For example, I never would have thought to put hazelnuts and mandarin oranges in my spinach salad. But in this salad I did and ...WOW! What a superior salad. Keep reading for the spinach salad and hazelnut vinaigrette recipe.

Kitchen Ingredient Home Remedies To Remove Skunk Odor From Dogs; Plus A Carrot Salad Recipe

Yesterday Dr. Sandra Sawchuk of the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Teaching Hospital gave me a home remedy recipe for removing skunk odor from dogs. The recipe calls for ordinary kitchen ingredients, is easy to mix, and highly explosive (if stored improperly). Precisely because it is so explosive when sealed in a closed container it is not easily marketed in pet stores. But Dr. Sawchuk swears it works. Her assisting resident questioned if the peroxide ingredient would bleach the pet's hair. Dr. Sawchuk wasn't sure but didn't think so. And what's worse, skunk odor or bleach blond hair? Here's the recipe:

Mix: 1 quart 3% hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup baking soda, and 1 teaspoon liquid soap (hand or dish soap). Instructions: Bathe animal in ordinary pet shampoo and rinse. Pour on skunk-off mixture and leave to air dry.

I haven't tried this skunk odor remedy yet. In the past I've fallen back on the traditional recipe for removing skunk spray. If you're curious about this older recipe, why I used it and want a cold carrot salad recipe that smells a whole lot better than skunk and wet dog, click on "Continue reading...".

Healthy Eating With Garden Vegetables In A Grilled Summer Vegetable Pasta Salad From the Madison, WI CSAC

The backyard garden is over-flowing with fresh vegetables! Now what to do with all the squash?  Best to ask the folks who garden for a living: The Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (CSAC). For a healthy recipe that uses zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant, and red pepper, I consulted the Madison Area's CSAC cookbook, From Asparagus to Zucchini: A guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce. The cookbook is organized alphabetically by vegetable and additionally by season. For any vegetable that could possibly be growing in a Wisconsin garden, the CSAC has a recipe for it. CSAC supporters and CSAC farmers contributed their recipes to this cookbook, and they also tell how to preserve vegetables for winter consumption. These folks understand the impossibility of eating a whole garden's worth of vegetables in late summer.

These CSAC gardeners are also dedicated to healthy eating. After a year and a half of cooking with this cookbook, I have yet to find a recipe that causes heart disease. That's one of the reasons I chose this recipe for grilled summer vegetable pasta salad for my contribution to Saturday night's potluck dinner at the Sugar Maple Traditional Music Festival at Madison, WI's State Farm Park. I was attending the festival with some doctors and nurses. On duty at Madison hospitals they routinely advise people about healthy eating. And I know they practice what they preach. So to this potluck I figured I best not show up with my Wisconsin-potluck favorites, deviled eggs and bacon-wrapped wieners stuffed with cheese. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe and more of the story.

Outdoor Party Food That Won't Spoil At A Picnic - Recipe for Sweet Potato Salad

Sunday, August 2, is Friendship Day. An outdoor party with friends is the best recipe for fun. But even in a group of best friends, all is not fair. Here's a brief account of how on this friendship outing to a picnic I got the short end of the straw and lengthened it.

"Let's go for a picnic at the lake! We'll go hiking and swimming!" my friends rallied. "We'll have a pot-luck picnic at the park!" went the cheer. "We'll bring brats and buns," one couple volunteered."

"We'll bring dessert and sodas!" other friends added.

I was slow and left to offer, "I'll bring the sides." Yes, I was to bring some Herculean, vegetable side-dish that could hold up in flavor and appearance while keeping bacteria at bay for the length of a summer day. What picnic food can be driven for an hour, stay in a car for 3 hours, sit on a picnic table for 4 hours and still be edible? Isn't this asking a lot of a vegetable? - at least one that tastes good? How about potato chips? Everybody likes them. Definitely bring the potato chips.

But I know these adults. They like "healthy food", which means to say that on the picnic plate beside the brat on a fluffy white roll has to be a healthy, vegetable side-dish that does not pour from a bag, - a deli carton okay, but not from a bag. But at a picnic I'd have to nix the traditional coleslaws and potato salads - they have mayonnaise in them. Nix the oil and vinegar lettuce salads, they get limp and soggy, and my kids don't like them anyway. - Oh yes, there's that hidden requirement, - kids have to like the food too.

So for this all-day, outdoor party I chose a recipe for sweet potato salad. My kids like sweet potatoes and this potato salad is sweetened with honey, - definitely a kid-friendly substance. And as sweeteners go, honey is healthy. Honey contains natural anti-bacterial compounds; that's why honey doesn't spoil in the hive. If those picnic table germs aren't scared off by the honey, the acids from the vinegar and lemon juice in this potato salad will pickle them! Yes, folks, here's a delicious, kid-friendly potato salad without mayonnaise! It can travel to a distant park, hang out on a picnic table and not spoil for the rest of the day. (Three days may be pushing it.) This potato salad even looks pretty. The dressing turns the sweet potatoes vibrant orange, and the green onions and diced red pepper add colorful accents. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe.