Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Smoked Pork Chops

Check out this delicious dinner of smoked pork chops, veggies, and homemade macaroni and cheese.  Can you believe this took me less than 30 minutes including the time to cook the smoked pork chops and make the mac and cheese from scratch? With a few shortcuts a balanced family dinner is only half an hour away. 

Smoked Pork Chops- Pork can be difficult to cook since eating undercooked pork can be dangerous, but overcooking drys it out.  These smoked pork chops are precooked, so all you need to do is warm them up in a skillet or better yet, on the grill for about 5 minutes on each side. Can't get much easier than that. If you can't find them in your grocery store or just want to share the gift of delicious smoked meat, these smoked pork chops ship nationwide from Wisconsinmade.com.

Vegetables- Wondering what to serve with smoked pork chops? I am a big fan of frozen vegetables, in fact, I prefer them over fresh.  Usually when it comes to food fresh is best, but frozen vegetables are picked at their peak and frozen right away to lock in freshness.  Fresh grocery store vegetables have probably taken a long journey and lost some of their nutrients and tastiness.  Stick with frozen and you'll be surprised how tasty and easy adding a side of vegetables can be.

Mac and Cheese- You could always make this from the blue box, but I suggest trying this Stove Top Mac and Cheese recipe.  It only takes a tiny bit more effort than the boxed stuff, but the results are amazing! Besides, if you are from Wisconsin, don't you feel a little guilty using that mystery powder when you have so much real Wisconsin cheese available? 

Looking for more easy family friendly meals? Check out these blog posts:

Easy Barbeque Biscuit Cups

Curry Wurst

Pasta Carbonara

Beer Cheese Soup With Veggies

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!

 

 

Another Rhubarb Recipe - Wisconsin CSA's Overgrown With Rhubarb - Must Make Rhubarb Marmalade

Here's another rhubarb recipe, - this one's for rhubarb marmalade. Yes, that's right, I'm up against the wall with rhubarb and have resorted to making jam. Although our Wisconsin spring is ending, the rhubarb keeps coming. It arrives in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes. It beckons in home gardens. Wisconsin cooks have likely already made rhubarb pie, rhubarb coffee cake, rhubarb cobbler, rhubarb fool, and even rhubarb slushies. But the rhubarb keeps coming. Perhaps your children are saying, "No more rhubarb!" BUT:

You can't waste rhubarb! Rhubarb only comes in spring. Period. Sure you can freeze the fibrous stalks, but then they thaw as mush. Not too appetizing. I decided to put up rhubarb in some more tempting form. That's why I made rhubarb marmalade.

I've never made jam before. Truth is, I don't like marmalade. But there was all that CSA rhubarb and my CSA cookbook has a recipe for rhubarb marmalade that sounded so easy even I could make it.

(My 7-year-old just walked in and asked, "What are you writing about?"

"Rhubarb," I said.

To which he replied, "Rhubarb, rhubarb, too much rhubarb.")

The nice thing about rhubarb marmalade is that you can give it away. Rhubarb marmalade can be a thoughtful gift as long as your friends don't think too carefully about it. So keep reading for the rhubarb marmalade recipe and more rhubarb recipes. (And be sure to keep enough of this rhubarb jam for yourself. You'll like it. I did!)

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.

Healthy Salad With Wisconsin Blue Cheese Salad Dressing: Recipe For Wisconsin Lumberjacks

Heaping helpings of healthy salad were my lunch and dinner today. On top of red leaf and iceberg lettuce, I piled raw broccoli, carrots, celery, cucumber, and red onion. Peppers and tomatoes are usual suspects in my healthy salads, but those veggies were expensive at the market yesterday so I went without. But don't applaud my frugal move, I spent the money instead on Wisconsin blue cheese so I could make homemade blue cheese salad dressing.

I'd been meaning to make this blue cheese salad dressing recipe for a long time now. Although blue cheese spread on a cracker is a bit strong for my taste, I do love blue cheese crumbled on salads or mixed into dressing. Wisconsin makes award-winning blue cheeses, and I was pretty certain that any salad dressing I made out of it would taste great. And it did. Here's the blue cheese salad dressing recipe I used. Keep reading for more about the salad and why a Wisconsin lumberjack would want it.

How Kids Cooking With Food Processors Stops Sibling Squabbling When Hosting Children's Play-dates

Make dinner, teach your kids to cook, stop siblings from squabbling, and host a happy children's play-date all at the same time with a miracle food processor! This wonder machine does it all. In the hands of a savvy parent, a food processor brings household peace, child happiness, and dinner to the table. How do I know? Because a stroke of genius struck me from the kitchen heavens when my two children were once again squabbling over who got to play with the child friend who'd innocently arrived for a play-date.

I tried enforcing that old rule of children's play-dates that says, "when a friend comes to play, everyone plays together; no one gets excluded." But with an age and gender difference between my children, this rule failed to establish harmony. The older girls wanted to do "girly things" like talk and giggle in the privacy of my daughter's bedroom. My young son wanted to tease and bother them. Sure, I could have played camp director and gotten everyone engaged in a group game, and I did for a while; we all played twister, dogs included. But as the play-date continued, I had to start preparing dinner. That's when I brought out my miracle worker - the food processor. Keep reading to find out how I used a food processor to stop my kids from squabbling and make potato latkes (Jewish potato pancakes) and red cabbage.

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.

Healthy French Ratatouille Is Dream Recipe For The Creative Cook

Just to let you know, my mom is not the only cook who neglects to specify proportions in a recipe. Linda and Roger Petterson, members of Wisconsin's Harmony Valley Farm group, also seem to think dictating quantities superfluous. Their recipe for French Ratatouille is an excellent example of how the Petterson's leave a cook room for creative interpretation. The recipe calls for zucchini, eggplant, onions, green pepper, tomato, parsley, basil, and olive oil. How much? You decide. How big is your pot? Or your appetite? Now the Pettersons do specify the quantity of garlic, - 1-2 heads (or do they really mean cloves,? Is a head one bunch of cloves? Probably in this recipe it matters little since everything else is relative). Yes, this recipe is the dream recipe for those cooks with attention-deficit disorder who have trouble following recipes to begin with.

In honesty, I am one of those recipe-following-challenged cooks. Perhaps my tendency to wander from obeying a recipe's stated proportions is genetic, or perhaps it just plain results from being too-easily distracted. But none-the-less, I like recipes that lack stringent guidelines. I've more room for error that way, - error that needn't be defined as error because, well with quantities lacking, who knew? Yes, the preparation of such recipes are more like experiments. So I am a kitchen experimenter. I couldn't say scientist however, because I never record notes on my procedures or outcomes. Rather mine is a dance of whim that more and more often results in edible food.

So I was drawn to the Petterson's recipe for French Ratatouille. And if you continue reading I'll tell you the assembly procedure they do recommend. But first let me urge you to try making it yourself for reasons beyond any acknowledged cooking ineptitude. You should make this recipe because it its healthy. It's all vegetables baked in healthy olive oil. No, it won't look pretty, but in post-holiday winter neither do we. In Wisconsin we're too bundled up for anyone to discern whose figure is svelte and whose isn't. Which is all the more reason to make a lot of this vegetable dish now and eat it. Make a huge quantity, take it everyday to work for lunch, and by spring you will be as skinny as a string bean. This is a healthy way to eat, to diet, to enjoy food. Bon Apetite!