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Showing posts from April, 2009

Win an HP Photosmart Wireless Printer

Please forgive, no recipe today. Instead a special give-away, just for the readers of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade. For just seven days, between now and April 27, 2009, BlogHer and HP are sponsoring a contest where an HP printer will be given away, ONLY to the readers of Kitchen Parade and A Veggie Venture. (Okay, well, anyone can enter the contest but I'm only telling my own readers about it.) This means that the odds of winning are very very high! All it takes is leaving a comment! But you must do it on this page! ~ Win an HP Photosmart Printer ~ Looking for healthy ways to cook vegetables? A Veggie Venture is home to hundreds of quick, easy and healthful vegetable recipes and the famous Alphabet of Vegetables . Healthy eaters will love the low carb recipes and the Weight Watchers recipes . © Copyright 2009

Five-Minute Shrimp Cocktail Sauce ♥ This Recipe Has Moved

So easy, guys! Just toss together a few common pantry ingredients and you've got a creamy-spicy cocktail sauce for shrimp, veggies and more and maybe just maybe, an instant party. Better still? Make it to taste, make only as much as you need! But the recipe has moved to a new location, please see Five-Minute Shrimp Cocktail Sauce at Kitchen Parade, my food column. "Dear Heinz Ketchup, Please, will you make my life easier? You see, I take a lot of guff for your regular appearance on my table. You’re the stuff of my childhood and I really don’t want to give you up. Eggs, macaroni and cheese, hashed browns and of course burgers and ‘ dogs, they’re just not the same without your cute little red squiggle. And I might get away with it, truly, if you were just a retro indulgence. But please, I can’t defend the fact that your third ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. You make this public, why not make it go away?!! And oh yes, I’m well aware that not everyone

How to Cook Edamame Right in the Shell ♥ Recipe

Today's vegetable snack: Frozen edamame, quick cooked and served still in the shell. A kid favorite! How long does it take to fill hundreds of eggs for the annual Easter Egg hunt? Hours! Nearing the end of the big job, the kids were fading and supper was still a long ways off. So I whipped out a bag of frozen edamame [pronounced ed-uh-MAH-may], still in the shell and threw them into well-salted water. Soon the kids (and a few hungry grown-ups too!) were digging into a big pile of shells. The older girls already knew the technique: dip a shell in a little salt, put it between your teeth and drrrraaag, popping the edamame beans into your mouth. Yummy! Thanks for being so willing to try something new, E, K and E (pictured) and also B, AJ and D! You all get A+! Edamame works great for grown-ups too, especially for casual outdoor gatherings. These are a real winner! EDAMAME in the SHELL Hands-on time: 2 minutes Time to table: 20 minutes Serves 6 hungry kids Well-salted water 1 pound fr

Creamed Eggs with Spinach ♥ Recipe

Today's easy-easy eggs-with-spinach recipe: A great way to use up leftover Easter eggs, hard-cooked eggs in a cheesy sauce, served over quick-cooked spinach. Beautiful color, hearty enough for supper. Low carb, high protein and for Weight Watchers, just PointsPlus 5. BACK IN 2009: Okay, so we tried, we really did. My friend Mary and I spent four hours on Sunday making what we hoped would be beautiful Easter eggs using natural dyes like turmeric and onion skins. Harumph. What did we get? Three dozen outright ugly amateurish-looking Easter eggs. And what else? Three dozen leftover hard-cooked eggs, many already cracked, needing to be used up. Anyone here share this pain?!! But whoa, was I ever happy with the first recipe, something created out of "air" but definitely to be repeated. There's just something magical about the combination of astringent spinach and creamy eggs. GETTING RID OF LEFTOVER EASTER EGGS If you too have a surfeit of hard-boiled pre-cooked Ea

Guest Post & Book Review: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Today, a guest post from an A Veggie Venture reader who's just finished Michael Pollan's book 'In Defense of Food'. His essay is a lesson in the loss of connection to real food (in just one generation!) and ideas on what it takes to return. I'd love to know your thoughts and invite you to join the conversation. ~AK The butcher’s rack in my kitchen shelves my cookbooks. To use a poor albeit irresistible metaphor, it groans from the weight of undigested manuals on the art and craft of cooking. Of late, the central theme of the books has been shifting from cookbooks about food preparation to books about food itself . To this reader and (I can’t help myself) consumer of such books, the sources, chemical composition, care, preservation and delivery of food have become as important as the preparation and presentation of the final product. [ Note to Vegetarians ~AK] Mine is a farm background. Much of my childhood food came from within a radius of a hundred yard