Tastes: Friday Food Fun - Week 5 - Beach Food - Seafood

1. What is your favorite seafood? Probably scallops, but I also love shrimp, crab, lobster, oysters, clams, and I like fish but not as much as the rest of these.
2. Are there certain seafoods you won't eat? No, but there are some that I've never had the chance to try. I will say, because of the way that most of it is prepared, I'm not crazy about deviled crab. I do eat it, but most of the times, I can't taste the crab...all I taste is the spices and so it's not seafood-y to me. Plus, they usually use a lot of onion and that overpowers everything else, so it's not one of my favorites.

3. Are you allergic to any seafood? Not that I'm aware of. I do, however, have a cousin who is highly allergic to seafood, among other things, and he can't even have his food prepared on the same surface or with the same utensils.
4. Do you prefer fried or broiled seafood? Broiled.
5. Do you like sushi (cooked or uncooked)? Yes!

6. What is your favorite seafood item? Well, I'm a sucker for a good bowl of clam chowder or oyster stew, some fried clam strips, or some boiled shrimp dipped in melted margarine, but really any combination of broiled seafood is bound to make me happy. I did find a really good seafood soup at a local sushi restaurant that has lobster, crab, shrimp, scallops, and fish cake in it and it has what tastes like a steakhouse seasoning flavor to it. Very good soup.

7. Do you have a good seafood recipe? Well, when I fix fish at home, I usually simply spray some butter on it and sprinkle it with parsley flakes and then pop it in the oven.

8. When you eat at the beach, do you go out to eat for your seafood, or do you fix it yourself? We usually do at least one shrimp boil (with corn on the cob, sausage and spice bag), but we always go out at least one or two times for a good seafood meal.
9. Is there something other than seafood that you consider to be "beach food" that you always have at the beach? We usually buy sandwich fixings for lunch. I usually like to have a bag of pistachios at the beach. I eat them other times of the year too, but there is just something about a vacation that says enjoy what you eat and what you do, and I love pistachio nuts, so that is one of my treats.

Tastes: Friday Food Fun - Week 3 - Salads

I love a good salad. At home, we use a salad mix (preferably with radishes, carrots, snow peas and a mix of lettuces). We add celery, hard-boiled egg, cucumber, tomato, bell pepper, black olives and/or green olives, and pickles. I use a Balsamic Vinegarette. This makes a very good salad. Sometimes, we'll add a little ham, turkey and swiss cheese to make it a chef salad. But, my ideal salad is a little different. First of all, I don't use a lettuce base. I put mushrooms, uncooked green peas, soybeans, chickpeas, fresh crumbled bacon, pepperonis, fresh Parmesan cheese, diced tomatoes, sunflower seeds, black olives, green olives, pickles and ranch dressing. Yum!

Tomes & Tastes: Scrapbooks, Cheese Cracker Mix and Pizza

I went to a Creative Memories "party" last night. The host, the consultant (who is a friend of mine), the consultant's mother, and I were the only four people there. She did show us a video of some of the software, which was cool. I got to use her computer to do some practice work for when I get the program myself. That was fun.

I have several scrapbooks but they aren't very organized. I want to work on them some more. I go through stages of working on them and then taking several years off and then working on them and taking time off. I think I'll be doing mainly digital scrapbooking once I get the program.

Last night she had bought some strawberry pastries and Munchies Cheese Fix mix. It was a store-bought mix of Doritos, Cheetos, Harvest Cheese Sun Chips and Rold Gold pretzels. It was very good. Click on the link to learn more about them.
http://www.fritolay.com/our-snacks/munchies-cheese.html

Last night they did digital. Today, they were working on traditional scrapbooking. I went planning to just show Lou, the consultant and my friend, some of the pages I've done and some of the tools I use to do them, but I ended up coming home and getting some supplies and going back to work. Of course, then she showed me the machine that punches letters and shapes out of any paper that you want and then you put them through a sticker machine and turn them into stickers.  So, I spent the rest of my time doing that.

Today, she bought pizza. It was good. She bought mushroom/pepperoni and also chicken bacon ranch. Today was Lou, me, my aunt's sister-in-law, Laura, Laura's daughter Katie, and one other lady I did not know. I might have to make this a monthly thing.

Tastes: Friday Food Fun - Week 1 - Eggs

Friday Food Fun
1. If you decorated eggs, post a picture of them. (Notice the glitter on the close-up.)

2. What is your favorite way to eat eggs? (Scrambled, fried, hard boiled, soft boiled, sunny side up, Eggs Benedict, egg salad, etc.) My favorite way to eat eggs in Eggs Benedict. But, I am not much of a chef, so my next favorite, much easier way to fix eggs is sunny side up.

3. If you have a unique way of eating eggs, please describe your recipe.

    I like to sprinkle dill and paprika on my sunny side up eggs.

4. Do you have a funny story about eggs?
    I was dyeing some Easter eggs, something I haven't done for probably 25 years. I made a batch of hard-boiled eggs (something I had never done by myself before). Well, apparently, even though I recently read the recipe (because I'm working on a cookbook for my mom) and thought I remembered it (thought being the operative word), I didn't.  After I took my pictures of the eggs I had dyed so beautifully, I wanted to eat one of my eggs, and I cracked it open to find out that it was not cooked completely - slightly runny. I cracked the next one open -- same thing. Soon, I had a plate full of cracked open eggs, and I thought, well, at least I can tell people I have a recipe for Easter egg salad.

5. Do you know of clips from TV/movies with eggs?

**I Love Lucy - This is a funny "I Love Lucy" clip where Lucy stuffs "eggs" in her shirt. It was stated that (at the time) it had the longest recorded audience laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixkijZYcPE8

** Napoleon Dynamite - Napoleon Dynamite at the chicken farm - eating an egg-stra special lunch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMdGOGtUg7k

** Bridget Jones' Diary - Her mother gets a job demonstrating an egg peeler product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oikVHGRsA2c

6. Do you know any egg-related web pages/blogs?

    **American Egg Board - home of the incredible, edible egg

    http://www.aeb.org/
     **An Article for The Florida Times
     http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/041703/dst_12290327.shtml

Have an Eggs-cellent Easter!

Friday Food Fun

Tastes and Tomes

Today, my double first cousin, Julie, and her daughter, Alaina came and had lunch with me. Alaina is 2 years old and she's a cutie pie. She had on the cutest little shirt. It had flowers and fruit all over it and looked like a certain design I've seen on greeting cards I think. Anyway, it was really cute.


I had made a dish...I'll call it Tracy's Talsa. You toss a can of black beans in a bowl. You toss in a small can of whole kernal sweet corn. You toss in a can of Armour chili. You toss in some Ragu (I used chunky style with mushrooms). You toss in some shredded cheese. You stir it together and microwave for about 10 minutes or if you need to re-warm it, 5 minutes will do.

 I served it with Scoops chips. I think it would've been good with a can of refried beans, too, or in place of the black beans.

 I also had made dessert. I made cream cheese icing. I only made half of the recipe. I used four ounces of cream cheese, half a box of powdered sugar, 2 tablespoons of margarine and 2 teaspoons of Vanilla flavoring. I left off the lemon flavoring. I blended it all together with a can of fruit cocktail (I drained the juice off). I then diced up 5 fresh strawberries and 5 fresh pineapple chunks and about half a can of fruit cocktail and stirred the diced fruit into the cream cheese blend and served it over plain pound cake.


It turned out very good and even Alaina liked it.


I read Karen Kingsbury's Take Three last night. It was awesome! I won't put any spoilers. But, if you like Christian fiction, check it out! It just came out in the stores yesterday. I knew the ladies at church would want me to get it and get it processed so they could check it out tonight, so I went ahead and picked up the copies at Crossway. I took time to read it last night because I was (conveniently - as the church librarian) the first one to "request" it. I give myself special privaleges. Anyway, that will allow one more person to get a copy tonight.

Tastes, Tomes, and Tunes

I'm TP. I may talk about food (tastes), books (tomes), or music (tunes). I also might talk about TV. You never know. But, these are my preferences, my opinions. Please keep any comments clean.

I'm a Christian and want to honor God in everything I say and do. I apologize if I offend anyone thru my words, but you are free to do your own blog.

If you don't know Jesus as your personal Savior and want to know how to know Him, click here.