December 2007 Archives

I took a different approach to the glaze I used on our Christmas ham this year. In previous versions I made it more orange flavored, using frozen orange juice, but for this year I took a different approach, and I'm happier with it.

I used maybe a cup of brown sugar, a goodly amount of dry Colman's mustard- at least a tablespoon or two, about an ounce or so of our Survival Spice® barbecue rub, then just enough fresh orange juice to create a paste. I slathered it on in two layers about 15 minutes apart during the last half hour, keeping a close eye on it because of all the brown sugar, and it came out beautifully.

How was your Christmas? Did Santa bring you anything good?

(Maybe I can get a gig with ZZ Top after the holiday rush...)

Merry Christmas from Julie, me and Desert Island Foods®.com! Thanks for all your support over the last year, especially with my sketchy blogging schedule. That's definitely on my list of New Year's resolutions.

Email me pictures of what you've been eating, if you'd like to share, we love getting pictures from you, even if you're not using one of our great products, but we love it a little more when you are!

Thanks again, and whatever you celebrate, I wish you the very best this time of year.

Ho ho ho, y'all! Well, we've got the Christmas orders out, and now it's a four day weekend around here. Thanks to everyone who placed an order at Desert Island Foods®.com, it's really gratifying to see how many of you come back to re-order time and time again, there's a lot of very familiar names to us now.

Steve has sent in a great Friday Funny, which lamely I'm posting on Saturday, but hopefully the result is the same.

Have wonderful Christmas, and thanks again for your support!

Unfortunately these days, it would seem, on the rare evening that I get to cook anything at home, my focus is more on words like 'simple', 'easy', and 'quick' than my old goals of 'astounding' and 'unforgettable', but the news isn't all bad. Indeed, as I do everything I can to minimize prep time and shopping hassles I'm rediscovering how good simple meals can be.

For this no-hassle oven fried chicken I replaced a traditional breading station like the one at the link with a zip-loc bag. The basic steps were the same, but simpler- for a change I started with some organic chicken breasts and some Tabasco sauce in the bag, coated them, hit it with some more Tabasco, then added a mixture of flour and Survival Spice®, tossing it well to coat it fairly evenly. I didn't use bread crumbs because, well, I didn't have any on hand and easy was the point here, remember?

I prepped some red potatoes, tossing them with kosher salt, Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva, cracked black pepper and some dried rosemary and put it all in to roast. While the chicken and potatoes were roasted, I trimmed up some asparagus, coating it with some more of the amazing olive oil, and with about 10 minutes to go I popped them in the same cast iron skillet with the potatoes and gave everything, including the chicken, a good squeeze of lemon juice, which really makes all the flavors pop.

Two cast iron skillets, one EZ-Hook®, and a one quart Ziploc® bag. Simple. And really, really good.

Happy weekend! Sorry I didn't get this posted, but I was testing the 'recipe' below. Or something.

I'd try this recipe from Will with Patron myself, but I'm sure the Cuervo will get the job done...

Have a great weekend, we've got lots of last minute foodie gifts over at Desert Island Foods®.com, if you're still out shopping!

Well, I was hoping this would be a longer post, but with the holiday crunch being what it is, I'll just have to hope that I'll have the time to add to this later. (UPDATE: I added some extra images and fleshed it out a bit more, for your dining pleasure.)

This is a spaghetti squash, halved, roasted along with some garlic, a small onion and a red pepper, then the good stuff flaked out with a fork and roughly chopped. I took the empty skins, which are quite robust, and ladled in some marinara sauce and some parm reggiano.

The veggies were tossed with some Survival Spice®, pine nuts, dry herbs, and more parm then stuffed into the skins. These roasted until it was hot, then I topped it with some home made bread cubes and a blend of mozz, asiago, provolone and more parm, then broiled it until it was brown and bubbly.

Served with a small steak on the side, it was great. I'd like to try this again soon with some crumbled sausage of some sort.

I will add to this, I took lots of pictures in the process. Really...

By the way, the seeds were terrific, roasted with some Survival Spice® and some of our Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgine di Oliva.

Friday. Crazy busy. No, really crazy, crazy busy, but we've all got time for a quick joke, right?

This one is from Mark, whose wife makes some great hand made jewelry, if you haven't hemorrhaged enough money already this season!

And.. uh, speaking of Christmas gifts, we've got lots of great gift baskets, gadgets and stuff over at Desert Island Foods®.com. Just in case I've never mentioned it...

I made some smoked turkey stock from our Thanksgiving turkey last week, and put together a veggie barley soup with some of the stock. We had eaten at Monti's Saturday night, and ate an absurd amount of their rosemary focaccia, so I decided to make some to have with the soup.

Good and good for ya.

The Gordon Biersch Marzen is a decent beer, especially on sale, but it would probably pair up better with a burger.