Ahh, breakfast.

Busy weekend. Saturday was spent running errands to finish up preparations for the wedding I'm catering in March. So I got up real early and made my way out to avoid crowds and to grab a bite to eat after a majority of the errands had been done. I decided to stop by a favorite breakfast place and enjoy someone else's cooking.

Let me tell you: If burned pain perdue, watery eggs, overdone sausage and not really cooked red potatoes (disguising themselves as homefries) is your idea of a great breakfast I recommend Mimi's Restaurant on Hospitality Lane in San Bernardino. This is not the first experience of a less than stellar meal with them so I had to write and let you know about it. If you are into really mediocre food, this restaurant is the place. Other Mimi's I've been to in the past have been good (I don't mean great, but good) and their breakfasts are usually the best. I really believe it is the general manager's lack of leadership that puts this specific location on my "not to return" list. Maybe not, but I do believe in top down leadership, setting the pace for successful businesses.

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Comfort Food

Comfort food. It brings to mind all kinds of culinary delights. It truly depends on the mood you're in as to which food really fills the need. It can be simple, homey or elegant fair. Comfort food invokes a sense of well being.

This, of course, feeds all those things a therapist and nutritionists worldwide work against. Food should not be a replacement for emotion. Repeat until it becomes your mantra. LOL. While I don't believe one should squirrel themselves up and make food their reason to live, I do believe there are foods that do lend comfort when consumed in moderation.

What kinds of delectible delights would you call comfort foods?

Mine, simple stuff. A cold crabcake and a slice of sourdough bread. Coupled with sitting at the beach with the waves pounding the surf and the wonderful smell of salt water in the air. You see, most of my comfort, also comes from the surroundings.

Chicken Jeruselem from Datilo's. It's a wonderful blend of fettucini, mushrooms and chicken in a marsala sauce. At home on a cold evening with a fire. It's usually cold outside and I need a little warmth.

My grandmother's goulash. With fresh baked bread and real butter, in my mom's kitchen surrounded by my sisters. That one hasn't been reproduced in a long time. I long to sit around a table with both of my incredibly talented sisters and have a bowl of goulash. We'd spend the afternoon talking of old times. Mostly remembering throwing all of our childhood belongings into yet another moving box and heading for who knows where, but it would still be good to connect.

Oatmeal. Not restaurant oatmeal. The real thing. My grandmother could cook a bowl of oatmeal everyone could love. It was her tried and true technique that made this wonderful breakfast delight. She never shared her recipes, so I have had to experiment to get it almost perfect, like hers.

Grandma's Oatmeal:

2 cups of water
1 tsp salt
1 and 2/3 cups of rolled oats

Add salt to water. Bring water to a boil. When boiling, add oats. Gently stir until just moistened. Remove from heat, cover with lid and let stand for about 8 minutes. Serve with your favorite oatmeal mix-in. (Brown sugar, butter, raisins, fresh fruit, milk or whatever you'd like) Serve.

This method should produce a flaky wonderful bowl of cooked oats. A bowl where almost every oat has its' own space in the bowl. It's not sticky or goupy, just flaky, light and very wonderful. Hope you enjoy it.

Now, what are some of your comfort foods?

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Etouffee on Fat Tuesday!

etouffee
Originally uploaded by foodchronicles.

Mardi Gras has long been a favorite holiday. In a sense it is not a religious holiday for most that celebrate the day, however, it does make for a great dinner.

In honor of this years Fat Tuesday I offer, Etouffee. Etouffee is my favorite Cajun food. It is spicy, filling and can be made with various meats. Traditionally it is made with Crawfish. Shrimp is a good substitute and as you can see in the picture chicken works well too. Etouffe is served at our house at least once a month, we don't wait for Mardi Gras to enjoy this great meal. It is a simple recipe to make and I encourage you to give it a try:

Etouffee:
8 T butter
1/2 cup of flour
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped bell pepper
1 cup chopped celery
3 cloves garlic minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
2 lbs Crawfish tails or peeled Shrimp
3 T lemon juice
2 cups of fish or chicken stock
1/2 cup chopped scallions
Cooked Rice

Prep:

1. Melt butter in skillet. Add flour and stir on low heat until flour is browned.
2. Add chopped onion, celery and bell peppers, garlic and cook uncovered until tender. About 15 minutes. Add salt, pepper and cayenne.
3. Stir in meat, lemon juice and stock cook for an additional 15 - 20 minutes until gravy is formed.

Serve:

In flat bowl mound rice in center. Surround rice with Etouffee mixture. Garnish with scallions.

Enjoy! Mmmm. This should be a spicy dish with just a little heat.

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Good Food = Good Times

Now there's a title I think we can all agree upon. Good food does equal good times. Once a month my husband and I have the unique opportunity to gather with about 80 young people. They are all between the ages of 18 and 30 and meet once a month to mingle and strengthen each other as they meet the world head on. It's a Sunday night and we meet at a local church. Our purpose, in being there, is to make sure they're fed.

It is an easy task. These young people don't expect a lot. They don't expect fancy. However, after years of the dinner being summarily reduced to "we'll make what ever we can to get you fed" ideology by others, we were called in to see what we could do. Well, I enjoy feeding a crowd. I enjoy being around young people. So I was excited to step in and take over the reigns of this position. After evaluating the SOP established over the years I was not impressed. It seemed a Potato Bar, Baked Stouffer's Lasagna, or Cold Cut Sandwiches was what qualified as a good meal. The Potato Bar was the least appetizing to me. Bake 80 potatoes, bring along sides of butter, cheese, sour cream, chives, chili and various other potato fixins and call it dinner, ugh! Presenting this as a balanced dinner is abismal at best, in my opinion. Get a grip folks! These are young people. Young people who seem to have a good grasp of nutritional studies and the ill affects of junk food in their lives. I took it as my personal quest to improve this menu. People said "this is the way it has always been done." To that I say "oh well, now we're doing it differently". Gasp! How will it be received????

Well, the first dinner I hosted was quite interesting. I must mention that part of the 'entry fee' for the dinner is an empty tummy and something to add to the dinner. Something, such as, croutons, dinner rolls, possibly cupcakes for dessert. A week in advance of the dinner I post a menu. Along with the menu is the acceptable add-ons. It is expected of the young people that if you're coming to the dinner - at least bring a supporting item. There is no cost and about half attending will show up with something. I'm not irritated if they come empty handed. I'm just glad they're there and I don't have leftovers. So even empty handed they're welcome.

Back to that first interesting dinner. I chose to serve Chicken Ceasar Salad, with dinner rolls. At first the mention of salad for dinner was a bit foreign, especially to some of the guys. The best comment of the evening was by a 19 year old young lady, "I didn't even know I liked Ceasar Salad until tonight". That was all I needed to hear. After years of potato bars and lasagna I have a break out to real food. Even green food! Yay! It has been an interesting few months. Last night proved to be the best yet. I knew I was competing with a 'sacred cow' trying to get young people out on Super Bowl Sunday. The food was going to have to be good. I chose a well known favorite of mine: Smoked Beef Brisket, Cole Slaw and Chips. Chips mostly so the kids would have an item to bring. There was no way I could rely on one of them to bring cole slaw. It is easy to do in mass quantities and I could do that with the brisket. Needless to say the crowd was a bit smaller. However, we still had about 65 attend. Everyone raved about the food and was very complimentary. There wasn't a bit leftover. There were seconds for all who wanted them and there was a group of five that didn't get anything at all. I told them next time instead of being 45 minutes late maybe they'd be on time or at least not so late. Their dinner was eaten by the seconds group of guys that couldn't get enough of Texas barbeque.

A lot of people will ask how do you cook for such a large group? It is realtively easy when you use basic consumption rules. 1/4 lb of any meat you're serving per peson. Salad - simple. You know how large your family is, when you make a salad at home how many does it feed? Divide that by the quantity you expect and you've got how much salad stuff to buy. Many people feel large numbers of people to feed are daunting. I say - just try it once - then you'll be hooked. Feeding people, making them feel at home, are the parts of life you don't want to miss. Coupled with the accolades of how good the food is makes it very worthwhile.

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Coinstar - Consumer Beware

I got an update today that told me about a great new feature they have at Coinstar kiosks. If you are not familiar with Coinstar, let me explain. They have kiosks in grocery stores all over the place and offer to save you time and trouble by sorting through your coins that have built up at home. It frees up your cash and your time! Coinstar counts coins at high speed. Up to 600 coins a minute. Coinstar then issues you a credit slip to give to the nearest cashier. She'll give you the dollar value of your coins. Wow such a deal. When you read the fine print maybe not such a good deal. Coinstar keeps 8.9 cents for every dollar in coin you drop in their machine. 8.9%?!?!?!? It's crazy.

Some of you may be saying to yourself it's worth it. However, you are probably the same people that check for coupons and deals in the local papers to save money. 8.9% is more than any Real Estate agent gets on a transaction. 8.9% is more than you'll ever pay in commissions to a stock broker, agent, car salesman or any other person that lives on commission. 8.9 cents for every dollar could easily be put in an emergency fund, school savings account, mad money account, humanitarian fund or any other worthy cause.

Back to their new great service! Now you can opt to do other things with your credit than just get cash. You can get a Starbucks gift card, pre-paid long distance card or pre-paid wireless connection card for your cash too. So that $2.70 venti hot chocolate from Starbucks just cost you $2.94!

Think about it. We all try to conserve money and spend it carefully. Well maybe not all of us, but plenty of us do. Let's not help make Coinstar successful at our own expense. Go buy yourself a little coin counter and wrap your own coins. You're worth 8.9%

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A little update on RFID

Business Week, has an article on the RFID mandate at Walmart. The author criticizes the retail world for not hopping on to this bandwagon and riding it full force. He says many have done the bare minimum to satisfy Walmart's request while ignoring the possible dollar savings for them in the long run. The "Slap and Wrap" tag he talks about is priced at .25 each. This is a cost that is applied to each and every item to which it is applied. It may not be a lot of money when you talk about a single item, but when it is factored into say 40 items in an average grocery cart that is significant. It is actually $10 extra per cartload. I am not sure about you, but I know that expense is not worth it to me. This is oversimplification of this issue by me, however, we need to put it iterms each consumer can handle. I could fill you with all types of facts and figures about supply side managemnt and inventory control but how long would I have your attention. The whole point of the blog is to bring information on how food gets to your shelf in as easy a fshion as possible. I want to help you begin to understand why these questions need to be asked, answered and understood. If I leave it in business speak, I'll lose a portion of you. For those of you who want it in business speak, send me an email - we'll talk.

We need to, as consumers, begin to talk about this phenomenom. What kinds of costs, are being passed on to us the consumer, with the intent to save dollars at the "plant". While reducing inventory management costs, those line item budget entries will be replaced with other lines. It may reduce the labor force by 2 or 3 individuals but is it really worth it? I'd rather have the item be tagless than put some guy out of work for Walmart's sake.

But then again, I can only keep you informed. The mighty GIANT will roll forth. Shop local. Save the job of a person you care about.

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Okay, Okay, I hear ya.

I know I have been slacking since the trip and all. However, I have good reasons. I spent two days getting a contract ready and getting it signed for my first ever wedding reception catering job. Wow! This year is to be my year. The year I step out into the darkness and go on my own. I am glad to have the opportunity to have good friends help get this ball rolling and we will do great things together.

The catering part of my life will allow me to earn money while getting things set up for my own food production facility. That is where I want to end up and catering is a great transition job. I will begin to build a building hwere production will take place soon and it will need to be funded with money. So show me the jobs! I will only do receptions as they are pretty demanding in their own right. I don't want to do luncheons or dinners as there are so many variables with them. Receptions can be well defined and have a specific schedule. One of my daughters and my great sister are willing to help get this project off the ground. We have done them in the past, tons of them, however I usually did it as a gift while the parents foot the bill for supplies. But now, we'll turn this into a full fledged business. I am looking forward t the hard work.

So that is what has had me pre-occupied. I am still working on reviews of the NASFT show. I do have to have a primer on photo linkage from the big guy so I can begin to upload photos to go with all the businesses I talk about. This will get done this evening so tomorrow there should be photos to go along with some verbage. I would even like to see a photo for the Ethos campaign I'm doing.

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