You've Got To Taste This

If you’re a savvy online organic foodie then you might already know that Whole Foods Market has hit the blogosphere. The Whole Story is a quant community that leaves you feeling refreshed after skimming through entries about healthy recipes, nifty products, and feel-good philanthropic reports. It supports the same friendly and exhilarating aura you may get when shopping at Whole Foods or a local farmers market. Grocery shopping has become a relaxing activity for me and cooking is one of the few hobbies I can focus on from start to finish. So I’m always in favor of having that same experience just clicks away when I’m broke or just too busy.

Their blog contributors are an eclectic bunch of natures best. Sharing their experiences about visiting organic farms and suppliers around the world to find food in its purest form, natural. From buying Artic Char in Iceland to sweet nectarines in Chile, writers go into detail about where your food is coming from. So I want to give a big kudos to Whole Foods Market Blog .

Some More Fresh Readings:
Buying Organic for Beginners
Dirty Dozen: Top 12 Fruits and Vegetables to Buy Organic

Do you have any good advice on buying organic?

My friends are probably getting tired of hearing about my trip to the Georgia island where we went to the beach and got our clams and mussels for dinner. But it really was one of the best food experiences I've had so far this year. My previous post was all about the clams, but now I must rave about the mussels.  I actually prefer mussels over clams. They are smaller than the clams we found, and the meat didn't seem quite as "chewy" as the clams. That small bit of meat in that mussel shell is like a little taste tease; you eat one and can hardly wait to fork into the next one. 

The mussels were not easily harvested and seemed determined to stay attached to the rocks and shells in the oyster beds.  The first time I ever picked mussels, they were easy to pluck from the rocks with my fingertips.  But this time they were embedded deeper into the crevices of the oyster beds and were harder to pull out.  I didn't relish the idea of having my hands all cut up from the jagged rocks, even though the result would be a fabulous dinner.  Next time I'll remember to wear gloves or bring some pliers. 

But our perseverance paid off and we did end up with enough mussels to satisfy our appetites. We steamed them in a mixture of white wine, garlic, and parsley, and served with melted butter.  Pure heaven!   I order mussels fairly often when I'm eating out, but I never remember eating any as good as these were.  Myabe it was the company. Maybe it was the beauty of the island.  Maybe it was the perfectly crisp white wine.  Probably all of the above. If you can't run down to the beach and harvest some mussels, settle for a good seafood shop and enjoy some with your friends. Here are a couple of easy recipes  to try: Mussels in Tomato-Basil Wine Sauce, Mussels Steamed in White Wine, and Steamed Mussels with Lemon, Onion, and Wine. 

So right after my daughter's first birthday party this weekend, I was down for the count with the flu.  Spring, where the heck are you?  This is the second time I've had the I-can't-bear-to-move flu this season, and I am so over it, you know? Over it.  It took three days to start feeling back to semi-normal and have enough energy to be upright this time, and my first thought?  I must make dinner!  My family had been surviving on leftovers, take-out and The Husband cooking one night, but I felt bad, so I decided if I was going to only accomplish one thing, it was to cook a quick dinner.

As luck would have it, I found the perfect recipe in the February issue of Southern Living magazine.  Quick, easy, reasonably healthy and something everyone in the family would eat - exactly what I needed.  The only thing I did differently was to use chicken tenderloins, instead of the full breast, so it cooked even faster.  My six-year-old son tends to be fickle about chicken (sometimes he eats it like there's no tomorrow, sometimes he acts like I'm feeding him dog food), so the thinner it is, the better chance I have of him eating it.  And hey, cooking this dinner was the longest I had stood up in three days, so I wasn't planning on pushing my luck.

Juicy, tender chicken, delicious pasta and a real table-pleaser all around.  As they say, "Winner, winner, chicken dinner."

See the recipe for Pan-Fried Chicken-and-Ham Parmesan.

For Valentine's Day, my fiance and I decided to avoid the masses and instead cook dinner and indulge in a nice bottle of red wine, in honor of Cupid himself.  I wanted to try something new, and something a little exotic, at least to my Southern-food loving soul, and was thrilled when a coworker recommended Cooking Light's Coq au Vin.  Her review? "My date was very impressed (actually broke out the 'I'm not worthy' bow)." Perfect!

If you've been too afraid to order this dish in a restaurant (the name can be tricky), you have to give it a try.  A classic French dish, Coq au Vin is basically chicken and vegetables cooked in a wine sauce.  With bacon.  And, yes, it's every bit as delicious as it sounds. 

The best part?  It's super easy.  I asked the grocery's butcher to cut up the whole chicken (much faster than if I did it myself), and then my fiance and I made the simple marinade, which calls for dried herbs.  Score!  The hardest part of the whole recipe was trying to find "dried plums" in the fruit section.  It took about ten minutes before either of us realized that "dried plums" = "prunes."

The dish smelled heavenly when cooking and tasted twice as good spooned over mashed potatoes.  My Valentine got up mid-meal to go get an extra bowl of the sauce, which I count as the highest compliment of all.  I'll take that over a prix fixe meal any day of the week.

Last week my daughter turned 1 and I needed to find something for her to bring in to daycare to celebrate with her little friends.  Although she's only there a few hours a week, if some of that time can be spent mashing her little fingers through cupcakes and frosting, all the better, right?  I had my mind set on making some bite-size little sweet treats and went online to find a carrot cake recipe that I planned on making mini cupcake size.  I'm all for a little sugar, but 8 one-year-olds on a sugar high can get a little crazy.

I thought I was in good shape when I found a recipe on AllRecipes that had some 1200 positive reviews - how could I go wrong with that, right?  Well, 45 minutes later when I was pulling the batch out of the oven, I found out that something went wrong, somewhere.  Now a week later, I'm still not sure why the recipe bombed.  It certainly was easy enough to follow, yet the end results were inedible, even for little 1-year-olds that are more than willing to eat most anything.  By now it was 10 pm and I was beyond tired, and I still had nothing to send in with her - ack!

I turned to Cooking Light's website in the hopes of finding something wonderful (and that I would have all the ingredients on hand for as well).  As luck would have it, I found a recipe for Banana Cupcakes.  Perfect!  Madeline loves banana bread, so a cupcake form of her favorite with frosting on top?  Even better!  Happy baby smiles all around, Cooking Light saves the day. 

See Banana Cupcakes recipe here.

I just spent a glorious long weekend on an island off the coast of Georgia. Aside from catching up with two good friends and drinking some fine wine, my favorite part of the trip was digging for clams and eating them for dinner.  Tallk about eating fresh and eating local!

But clam digging is not for the faint of heart.  We had to venture to several spots on the beach before we had any luck finding clams.  Once we did, digging and raking with the pitchfork left me a bit winded!  Plus, my feet were getting a bit warm in the tall rubber boots, but I was glad I had them on because you do have to stand in a little bit of mud to get the good clams.

Once we got our "catch" in the bucket and back to the house, we let them stand in the water for a while to filter out the dirt and sand.  Then we scrubbed them some more.  Then the hard part was over.  Cooking them was easy. You just put some white wine, garlic and parsley sprigs in a Dutch oven and bring the liquid to a boil.  You need enough wine to cover all the clams. Add the clams (and mussels, too, if you have them), and cook until the shells open. If any are not open, you have to discard those. Use tongs to remove the shells from the liquid and put the shells on a platter. 

Just remove the meat from the shells, dip it in a little melted butter, and you'll be in heaven. You don't really need a recipe to steam clams and mussels if you're keeping it simple like this, but  here's one that is  pretty close to what we did: Steamed Clams or Mussels in Seasoned Broth .

More later about harvesting those mussels!  I'm in withdrawal from my magical time on the coast and am going to cook some shellfish to feel better.  Let me know if you have any favorite recipes for clams.

With Friday the 13th right around the corner (and just before Valentine's Day, no less!), it's the perfect time to review the freaky food superstitions held by people around the world: 

It sounds like a fish story to us, but for centuries fishermen have vehemently refused to have bananas on their boat. Rumor has it that an illness once befell one fisherman after eating the fruit, or at least that's how he explained his poor catch that day. If you do go fishing with a superstitious angler and must bring a banana, hide it inside an innocent chocolate cake, and don't offer to share.

Other crazy fears and traditions?  Only cutting cakes on Christmas Eve, and saving at least one slice for the big day; finding true love in the shape of an apple peel; and, of course, eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.

In my house, we never had "bad luck" food superstitions, but we did have several happy traditions including making Grandma's rolls for every major holiday, eating chicken noodle soup and cheese toast on Sunday nights, and making a huge batch of baked spaghetti for the entire team the night before a big game.

I'm happy to report that food never directly altered the outcome of pretty much anything in my life, other than leading to the occasional tummy ache from overindulgence or satisfied nap following a brunch splurge.  What traditions do your families have? I know somebody must've actually thrown salt over their shoulder after a tabletop spill...

When it comes to Banana Bread, it's something that we make here quite often.  I've tried tons of different recipes (just look at all the threads dedicated to Banana Bread on Cooking Light alone, but I keep coming back to the same two: Nigella Lawson's version, which features rum-soaked raisins (hello!) and Paula Deen's version, which features a full stick of butter.  If I had a gun to my head and could only choose one, it would most likely be Nigella's.

Between the four of us in the O'Malley household, bananas don't stand a chance.  When they are the brilliant shade of perfect banana yellow, we go through masses of them, including the baby, who practically inhales them.  But by the same token, none of us, particularly my son, like them once they go spotty.  Once the brown mushy freckles start to appear, my son starts his chant for banana bread.  We recently introduced Madeline to it, and the two of them will chomp away on slice after slice, eschewing more sugary, processed snacks, which is absolutely alright by me.

There are thousands of banana bread recipes out there, and we've probably tried a good 20-30 ourselves so far, just in case there's one that beats our top two favorites ... but maybe there's another one out there that is a must-try ... we'd love to hear about your own favorite!

See Nigella's recipe for Banana Bread right here.

I just stumbled across a Bernard Devoto quote that has me longing for a martini, "The proper union of gin and vermouth is a great and sudden glory; it is one of the happiest marriages on earth."
Like Devoto, I'm a devotee of the gin martini. It has a crisp brightness that vodka just can't seem to deliver. Real Simple captures the classic gin martini with their recipe:

* 3 ounces gin (Bombay Sapphire, Beefeater, or Tanqueray--something around 94 proof)
* 1/2 ounce Noilly Prat dry white vermouth
* 8 to 10 ice cubes (cracked or crushed ice chills faster than cubes)

Chill a martini glass in the freezer for at least 5 minutes. Pour 3 ounces gin and 1/2 ounce dry white vermouth into a stainless-steel cocktail shaker or a chilled tumbler.
Place ice cubes in the shaker or tumbler, stir vigorously for about 20 seconds with a long-handled spoon, and strain into the chilled martini glass.

Enjoy the "great and sudden glory," and browse more gin recipes. My favorite is Gin and Spice Flank Steak.

How do you like your martini? Where do you stand on the gin vs. vodka debate? Shaken or stirred?

One of the most useful pieces of restaurant advice I've ever received came from an IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) meeting I attended several years ago. The speaker said that if you were looking for the most authentic ethnic restaurants in town, you should go to the ones located in strip malls.  And the uglier the strip mall, the better the food. I have tested out this theory on numerous occasions and found it to be true every time.

Last Friday night I ate at a Mexican restaurant here in Birmimgham called Gordo's.  It had been recommended highly by several of my coworkers, and since it's located in a not-particularly-attractive strip mall near my home, I knew I couldn't go wrong. This place is becoming sort of well-known for it's tacos, which are more authentic than the kind you get at fast food restaurants.  For example, you can get your taco with tripe or beef tongue, two of their specialties. 

I'll have to admit, I was not quite that adventurous. However, one of my dining companions, a 10-year old boy, certainly had no qualms about ordering a beef tongue taco.  I stayed safe with steak and chicken, both incredibly flavorful and wrapped in a really fresh corn tortilla.  There's nothing else on the tacos when you get them, but there is a little "buffet" next to the serving line where you can add salsa (very hot salsa!) lime wedges, cilantro and a couple of other toppings.  No lettuce, no tomatoes. No shredded cheese.  Just the amazing flavor of the meat and the fresh corn tortilla with some tongue-tingling salsa on top.  This is definitely the way to eat a taco.  I'll be back tonight. Maybe I'll even try the tripe taco.

If you want to make tacos at home that resemble the ones at Gordo's, the Slow-Roasted Pork Tacos from Cooking Light seem pretty close.  It's a simple recipe that shines because of the great flavor of the pork and the corn tortillas.  I would recommend getting your tortillas at a Mexican market so you can be sure they are fresh.  Don't forget the Mexican beer to make sure your meal is as authentic as possible.   Let us know if you've got a great taco place in your town.