Tasty Tuesday ~ You had me at Avocado 2 ~ AACB

Grilled Apple Avocado (Pepper Jack) Cheese & Bacon

 2 pieces of sourdough bread buttered on a skillet.

Put pepper jack cheese on bread.

Mash and avocado up and put it up on the other side, top with cooked bacon.

Add thin apple slices.

Enjoy. 

Had inspiration via 

You had me at Avocado ~ Avocado Fries

Ingredients 

• Canola oil for frying (I used olive oil)
• 1/4  cup  all-purpose flour
• 1/4  teaspoon  kosher salt, plus more to taste ( I used sea salt)
• 2  large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 1/4  cups  panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
• 2  firm-ripe avocados, cut into 1/2-inch wedges

1. Pour oil into a small pot until you have a depth of 1 1/2 inches. Heat to 350° over medium-high heat. 

2. While oil is heating combine flour and salt in a small bowl. Put beaten eggs and panko in separate small bowls. Dip avocado wedges in flour, shaking off excess. Dip in egg, and then coat in panko.

3. Fry avocado wedges, in batches, 30 to 60 seconds or until golden brown, and drain on paper towels.

Place on a baking sheet in a 200° oven to keep warm while frying remaining wedges. Sprinkle with additional salt to taste.

Leftover Ham Salad

There is a Rachael Ray recipe for a Ham Salad that I love to use when we have leftover ham. This was our plan when we took ham home from Thanksgiving. I knew that I was going to make some substitutions but when I got home and looked in my cabinets I ended up having to make many more which changed the whole recipe. Here is the one that I came up with:


Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic, grated
• 1/4 cup EVOO - Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 4 shakes of dried tarragon
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste
• 1 bunch asparagus, woody ends discarded, thinly sliced on an angle
• 1 pound of leftover ham, cut into very thin strips
• 4 slices of Munster cheese
• 2 babybel original wheels
• 1 slice mozzarella cheese
• A loaf of crusty bread

Mix together Dijon, Balsamic vinegar, tarragon, olive oil, garlic salt and pepper. 

Add the rest of ingredients.

Serve as a salad or on bread as a sandwich. 

Tasty Tuesday on Thursday ~ Tomato Chicken Curry

Saturday we got snowed in, well we probably could have left but we decided not to. We did a lot of work around the house. I cleaned and rearranged the 2 lazy Susans. I found a few things that I wanted to use because they are past their prime, one thing I needed to use was a tomato soup.

Ingredients

• 1 can of tomato soup
• 4 chicken breasts cubed
• 1 cup of beer
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 chopped tomato 
• 1 Tablesoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper
• Jasmine rice

Preheat oven to 350

Heat an oven safe skillet on stove top, add olive oil. Saute onions and tomato. Soften onion, add chicken. Add beer once the chicken is cooked, add soup and seasoning. Put in oven for 30 minutes. Cook rice. Let the chicken cool and thicken for 10 minutes before serving over rice.

My Favorites in my Kitchen

Everyone has things that they cannot live without, well really we can but we don't really want to. Here are some of my favorite things about my kitchen.

My spice rack. I used to have all of these on the side of my fridge at my apartment but now that we own our condo and we did not have the side of the fridge exposed I got these magnet boards at The Container Store and put all the spices on them in alphabetical order.

This is probably my number one on my projects for if I had a silhouette. I would make all the spice names in cut out vinyl with designs on the top and the bottom in the same blue or charcoal paint that we use in the condo.

My vitamix ~ this thing is so incredible you can do so much with it. Cook dinner in 5 minutes automatically after a long day. Make your own powdered sugar and nut butters. And Margaritas forget about it. Plus I did not realize this until about a year after I had it but look how they made the cookbook.

The bottom flips up to prop itself up. These people are genius, and it is made in the USA and has a 7 year warranty. 

Our Penguin Water Carbonator. It was a Christmas present last year from our in-laws. We use this all the time. We can have sparkling water any time we want, which is everyday. The company forces you to recycle the cartrages (which last forever) retail for $30 however if you bring your old one back they are only $15 and if you do it at Bed Bath and Beyond you can bring in one of those $5 off coupons (they will even take expired ones) then it is $10 for us that is about 2 months of use. Additionally we are not encouraging the creation of all of those plastic bottles. We usually just put lemon juice inside, or the essences that they sell, recently I also made ginger syrup to make homemade gingerale.

Strawberry Huller

 When we were regestering for our wedding the store manager at Williams Sonoma threatened us that if we did not put this on our bridal registry she would pull it up after we left and add it. Well we put it on there and my brother Chris and his wife Sandy got it for us. Well if I am blogging about it here it is obviously amazing, check it out. 

Commercial Multi Chopper

This makes everything a snap, I used to have the smaller version but it broke and they would have just given me a new one but I wanted the extra space so I upgraded to this. 

Dices

French Fries

Apples, Lemons

Slices

In the pantry I love this vanilla 

So when I was in high school I remember being brought to Williams Sonoma. I totally FREAKED out when my step-mom Lisa spent $20 on a thing of vanilla. She told me that it made all the difference in world, I was adamant that it could not. So we went to the grocery store and I bought a normal vanilla extract and we went back to her house and cooked 2 batches of cookies one with this, one with my vanilla extract. It is safe to say that I have never used grocery store vanilla again.

Williams-Sonoma

Dear Williams-Sonoma,

You know just how to get me in to trouble. Tuesday you put nespresso on sale for 40% off, which I was really happy about because that is what Mikey wanted for Christmas. So I went to your store and got one it looks like this:

Then I woke up Wednesday and this was in my email box:

So I went and picked up some of this:

Thursday they are doing 20% off for friends and family including All Clad, We are finally getting this (I have lusted over it for a decade):

And this

Thanks to everyone who came to our wedding. We will be cooking for-ever! Mikey got our pots and pan rack this last weekend. When I was there on Wednesday buying hot cocoa I asked so are you going to be doing this everyday? Because you are getting me in a lot of trouble. May the 27 days of Christmas begin, she said yes. 

Love,

Tiffany

P.S. I am having the pre ugly sweater party today at work. Just to break the sweater in for Leslie's party.