Pumpkin Paradise: Something New for the Season

Dear Suzy,

I love pumpkin flavored things, so of course this is my favorite season! Still, I find that after more years than I'll own of eating all the traditional fall desserts, I am sick of classic pumpkin pie! I know it's a terrible thing for a pumpkin lover such as myself to say, but I just think it could be... jazzed up a bit, don't you? I'd ask for a pumpkin cheesecake recipe, but cheesecake is so very heavy! What can I make this year to spice things up?

Pumpkin'd Out,

Mrs. Spratt

Dear Mrs. Spratt,

I have the perfect recipe for you! It's called "Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie" and it's one of my original recipes. 

This pie can be and has been multiplied to serve large groups.

This is a hotel pan serving about 40.

It has everything you love about pumpkin cheesecake without being quite so heavy. It does include both weight measurements and volume measurements, so a scale is useful. If you don't have a scale, there are some excellent weight-to-volume converters on google to help you convert it easily. I really like this one. I hope you enjoy! I encourage all of my readers who try this recipe to post photos of their results in the comments- I love to see them!

Chai Cheesecake Pumpkin Pie

        Yield: 2 pies

Filling:

1#2oz cream cheese, SOFT 17oz sugar .5oz corn starch 10oz sour cream 3 chai tea bags put through a strainer to get the big pieces out 15oz Pumpkin puree 5 eggs 1.5 tsp vanilla 1 can evaporated milk

Crust: 8 Graham crackers .5 box club crackers 2 sticks butter 4 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
- First combine sugar and corn starch in a sifter/strainer, sift into a mixer bowl and mix well - Add soft cream cheese and mix at medium power. - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again - Scrape whole bowl and mix again (seriously all 3 times, it's super important- trust me!) - Scrape bowl well and add sour cream - Mix @ half power - Scrape bowl well
- Add chai spices and pumpkin puree and mix - Scrape bowl completely and mix again - Add eggs one at a time while mixing - Add evaporated milk and vanilla while mixing - Pulverize the crackers into crumbs - Melt butter - Pour sugar and butter into crumbs and mix well - Smooth crust mix into two pie pans - Par bake crusts for 5 minutes at 325 - Pour filling into crusts - Place pans into a cookie sheet and place the cookie sheet into the oven (preheated at 325) - Pour hot water from a pitcher or liquid measuring cup into cookie sheet so that shallow water covers the whole surface without splashing into the pies - Bake pies until just barely jiggley in the center - Pull out pies, leave cookie sheet - When oven is cooled, remove pan of water - Cool pies for about an hour, chill overnight.

You may be wondering why on earth you need to scrape the bowl so many times. Simply, the biggest difference between a perfect cream cheese dessert (particularly cheesecake) and an... amateur one... is that a perfect cream cheese dessert has no spots, specks, chunks or blobs of white when you cut into it. The more you scrape and re-mix, the more likely you are to have it come out perfect. Especially with a pumpkin pie with orange filling, those white specks of cream cheese are nobody's friend.

Restaurant Review: Cheddar's

Nearly every week for over 5 years, I've met my grandmother for lunch or dinner. It's the highlight of my week every time, because my grandma is AWESOME. She's in her mid-80's, volunteers regularly, lives by herself upstairs, does crossword puzzles like she's channeling Will Shortz, knits roughly 62.4x faster than I do, sponsors a child in a 3rd world country and writes him letters in Spanish, reads at least 1 book per week, goes visiting people younger than herself at the nursing homes to read to them, and still makes time for her youngest granddaughter every week. I could and should and probably someday will write a blog about what I've learned from my weekly lunches, but this particular blog was inspired by the meal I had at our most recent dinner.

Cheddar's is, by most people's standards, a very middle of the road, American eats establishment. Middle priced, general American-style menu, nestled right in there alongside Applebee's, Fridays, maybe a notch above Chili's (two notches lately, anyone else feel like Chili's has gone downhill lately? or have my standards just improved with adulthood? I digress). HOWEVER. As I have periodically patronized the Cheddar's in my area, their menu, food preparation standards, and staff have gotten better and better.

My favorite dish at Cheddar's is their Asian Salad. It sounds standard enough, most places have an Asian salad nowadays, but Cheddar's Asian Salad stands tall above the rest, and not just literally.

[Photo source: www.thedallassocials.com (via Google Image)]

Not only is this a low guilt meal, - - - - - No, I'm going to skip the cliche, commercial-sounding review of the obvious and just describe this dish. It has crunchy, crispy wontons layered between a cold, dark-leaf, crispy shredded lettuce salad, tossed with diced mango, cucumber, spicy relish, grated carrots, tomatoes and grilled chicken breast, dressed with an Asian vinaigrette with chopped cilantro, and lightly drizzled with a thicker, salty sauce. 

It's not just about what's in this salad, it's about how they work together. First, of course, there's the taste- most important, and then the texture. The sour, tangy dressing with the slightly spicy, bitter cilantro (but just the smallest sprinkle- I'm not a member of the cilantro-loving camp, but I really like Cheddar's' use of it here), the cool, quenching, crunchy cucumber (again, not usually a fan of cucumbers but I like them in this salad!) with the slightly sweet, super crunchy carrots, juicy fresh tomatoes and the soft, sweet, aromatic mango pieces- all of this finished with lovely surprise bursts of spiciness from the infrequent bits of relish smattered throughout. The grilled chicken is well-cooked, never dry, and sliced thinly, adding a touch of smokiness and a welcome soft, al dente bite you can only get from properly cooked meat. The method they use to slice the chicken and toss it in with the salad, rather than laying it on top, allows easy fork-fulls and perfect bite-ratios (when you have a little bit of everything on one fork for the best bite). The wontons work perfectly, with the touch of oil from frying mellowing out some of the acid from the dressing, and the unimposing, super crispy starch converting me from croutons forever. All of this finished with the lightest sprinkle of some kind of salty Asian sauce that puts it over the top. 

[Phone photo of my dinner more than half eaten, I dug in before I could stop and get a photo of it fresh]

All the best elements: Sour, Tangy, Crunchy, Acidic, Sweet, Cool, Quenching, Bitter, Juicy, Soft, Smokey, Spicy, Aromatic, Salty- and most of all, Satiating. I usually make two meals of it. 

The cherry on top is that the salad comes with a warm, honey-butter drizzled croissant, which in all my professional experience I am willing to bet is baked freshly in-house.

Anyway, Cheddar's always has excellent food, and while I could make this stupidly long, suffice it to say you'll get your money's worth on pretty much every menu item except the chips and queso- queso is a little too thick and bland, chips are stale about 40% of the time. Still worth checking it out for a date, whether with your significant other or your grandmother.

A Delectable Dilemma

Dear Suzy,

I recently bought an enormous jar- no, barrel- of Nutella at Costco, BECAUSE I COULD. Now that the euphoria of my awesome deal has worn off a touch, WHAT am I going to DO with this glorious bounty of hazelnutty goodness?!?!?

Salivating,

Forsythe P. Jones

Dear Jughead,

I'm going to do this post list-style, and then you can ask for any recipes you'd like to try in the comments:

1. Frozen-nutella-dipped-banana-on-a-stick
2. Nutella Fondue
3. Nutella stuffed french toast
4. Nutella filled begnets
5. Ennumerable non-PG sexy applications I won't list here
6. Nutella filled croissants
7. Nutella mascarpone filling for cannolis
8. Warm Nutella over ice cream
9. Nutella Popsicles
10. Nutella truffles
11. Nutella cream Pie
12. Fruit tarts with Nutella cream filling
13. Nutella funnel cake
14. Nutella Pancakes/Waffles
15. Just plunge your whole hand into the jar like Winnie the Pooh does with a jar of honey
16. Nutella buttercream for a cake
17. Baked Brie with Nutella
18. Nutella cake
19. Nutella Cheesecake
20. Nutella chocolate Milk
21. Peanut Butter and Nutella sandwich (best on toast)
22. Nutella Bread
23. Nutella Mocha
24. A hot grilled cheese sandwich with a gooey milder cheese such as havarti or fresh mozzarella is delicious when dipped in Nutella
25. Pretzels & Nutella
26. Nutella Brownies
27. Nutella Cookies (optionally with toffee or hazelnut chips)
28. Nutella Souffle
29. Nutella Monkey Bread
30. Nutella Italian Egg Cream
31. Nutella Egg Nog
32. Nutella and strawberry sandwich
33. Nutella and Banana sandwich
34. Frozen Nutella Dipped Pineapple
35. Nutella Empanadas
36. Nutella Fruit Pizza
37. Peanut Butter Nutella Mousse Pie
38. Nutella Crepe Station
39. Nutella S'mores
40. Nutella as a dip for a Monte Cristo Sandwich
41. Nutella Biscotti
42. Nutella Molten Cake
43. Nutella and pear filled Filo pastries
44. Nutella French Toasted Quesadilla
45. Nutella Pots du Creme
46. Nutella Creme Brulee
47. Nutella Scones
48. Nutella 'Nana Puddin'
49. Nutella Oatmeal
50. Nutella Filled Cream Puffs/ Eclairs

There are so many more, but hopefully I've given you a few ideas to try for now. This post is a little shorter, but only because I anticipate your requests for recipes in the comments section, so I'll see you there!

Please write to me with your questions about recipes, romance, relationships, family, life... anything! Just click the "email us" link on the right hand side of the page, or email me at asksuzyadvice@gmail.com.

Easy Summer Dinner Party

Hello, dear readers- I've missed you too!

Tonight I'm having my community group from church over for swimming and supper. I want to keep it simple because, well, I'm human and lazy and not a masochist, I need to keep it cheap because I'm a student working part time right now, but most importantly I want to make it absolutely delicious because I'm a chef, which means the expectations of my cooking are already high, and also I have an innate desire to show off a little.

Now that I've assembled the ingredients for my menu and I'm getting ready to put them together, I thought I'd take a moment to share my recipes, in case any of y'all plan to put on a summer shindig sometime soon.

For dinner, I've decided to make "Summer spaghetti", my own take on something I had at a friends' house one time. For dessert, I'm making a fresh Peach Crostata. If you want to know how to make these items the recipes are listed below. The total money I spent for 8-10 people was about $25. I made the invitation BYOB so cokes and wine will come with the guests.

You'll need:

• Angel Hair pasta or spaghetti for however many guests you'll be feeding
• 1 qt Chicken Broth (I use the lower sodium kind because there is too dadgum much salt in EVERYTHING these days)
• 2 lemons, juice & zest (zest them first!)
• 2-3 tbsp fresh Parsley, chopped
• minced garlic
• grated parmesan (I buy the cheapest off-brand stuff, they're mostly the same when you're cooking it into the dish, and half the price!)
• Asparagus, broccoli or summer squash like zuccini (as much or as little as you want)
• chicken (about 1 breast for 2 or 3 people, depending on the size of the breast)
• grape or cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered

First, tenderize the chicken. If you have a fancy tenderizing hammer, awesome. If you don't, do what I do- cover the chicken with a piece of plastic wrap and use a rolling pin or heavy recipe book. You're just beating the tar out of the meat, it's not exactly a scientific procedure. 

Next, place the chicken into a well greased skillet or onto a stove-top griddle or outdoor grill. keep the heat medium/lowish so that the chicken cooks all the way through before the outside of the chicken dries out. You'll know it's done either when you stick it with a meat thermometer and it reads at LEAST 165 degrees, or when you cut it with a small knife, right in the center, and there is no pink to be seen.

MEANWHILE, Place a pot on the stove, and pour the chicken stock into it. Add the lemon juice (strained) and lemon zest. Now add your pasta and turn on the burner. Let the pasta cook in the liquid, covered for the first 10 min and then uncover it and let the pasta absorb it as it boils until it's fully cooked.

While the pasta is cooking, flip over your chicken to ensure that it's cooked evenly on both sides. Take the chopped parsley, 2tbsp parmesan and 1-2 tbsp garlic (depends on how much garlic you like), combine them and stir them into the pasta.

Place your vegetables onto the grille or into a skillet or saute pan. You'll want to pre-chop the broccoli or summer squash, but leave the asparagus whole for cooking and then chop it up after you take it off the grill. 

Chop up your chicken breast into bite-sized pieces and add the chicken and vegetables to your pasta, stir it in over a low heat. Leave the whole combination on the heat for a few minutes, then take it off the heat and stir in the tomatoes (raw). Serve!

Peach Crostada:

• Flaky Pie dough- if you would like a recipe, let me know. They do sell it at the store in the freezer section, which is ok (not great), or you can use most flaky pie crust recipes.
• Peaches- for a 9" crostata, about 7 peaches will suffice.
• 1-2 tbsp sugar
• 1 dash ground nutmeg (fresh is best!)
• 1 egg white
• some Turbinado sugar if you want (not necessary!)

Peel the peaches and slice them into thin slices, about 1/4" wide.

Toss them in a bowl with the sugar and nutmeg. (Save the Turbinado sugar!)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Roll out the pie dough into a circle about 14" in diameter (no need to be perfect).

Fold it up and lay it out onto parchment paper on a flat cookie sheet. 

Pile the peaches in the center of the dough circle with a 3" radius around the edge, then carefully fold up the sides of the dough all the way around, fanning the overlaps (ideally in the same direction for aesthetics).

Take a strip of Aluminum foil and wrap it gently around the outside to hold the crust in place, leaving the top open.

Bake for 25-35 min or until the peach filling begins to boil.

Allow to cool a bit, remove the foil and brush the outside with the egg white, then coat the outside with the turbinado sugar.

Put the Crostata back into the oven for 2 more minutes, to make the sugar stick.

For a summer dish, a peach crostata is ideally served at room temperature, but if it is still warm from the oven when you serve it, that's ok- it might be just perfect with some vanilla ice cream!

Signature Dish

Hello, dear readers! 

The writer of the blog Sparkly In The City at sparklyinthecity.blogspot.com recently wrote a post about the advantages of having a signature dish. In short, it's a special dish that you can make easily and bring to parties, so that eventually you become known for bringing it and everyone can automatically assume you have some cooking prowess, even if in reality it is the only dish you have ever known how to make in your entire life. So my friend Sparkly asked if I would write a sister post to hers about HOW to make a signature dish. So I'll list a few tips below:

•  Think of dishes you like to eat at parties. Since this is your signature dish, and it will be at most of the parties you attend (because you're the one bringing it) it is unwise to select a base- recipe that isn't even appealing to you. 
•  Google the recipes- look at multiple dishes, and select one based on your level of cooking experience- I've been a chef for 7 years and I still wouldn't sign up to make souffle my signature dish, because the difficulty in a flawless execution is not something I want to go through before every party. 
• If you are a novice in the kitchen, read over the recipe and look for action words you don't understand. You either need to immediately google the word and figure out if it's just a pretentious word for a simple action, or move on to a recipe that you understand upon first look. 
• Short ingredient lists do not necessarily indicate simple recipes, but I do recommend them- For a signature dish, you don't want to have to restock your entire kitchen with ingredients that you don't even know how to use in any dish other than your signature. You want to keep it simple, so that you can make a 5 minute trip to the store, or always have your kitchen stocked with the ingredients, and hopefully make the dish with very little notice or forethought.
• Now, you've selected a recipe- what's so signature about a dish that you found a recipe for online? First of all, that it's homemade. You're already making something more special than any of those people who bring a 2 liter of Dr Pepper or a bag of chips. But you know I'm fixing to tell you how to make the dish truly signature- special and secret!
• My best trick for secret or signature recipes is that even if I were to take a recipe and just change or add one ingredient- I just changed the entire chemistry of the dish! You only need ONE change to make something completely different. Here are some suggestions for what you can add to make something just a little bit special:
• On a sweet signature dish, it may be as simple as sprinkling a tiny pinch of sea salt onto the top of whatever you make.
• I'm a native Texan, and we have a habit of adding Jalapeno to EVERYTHING. But, in all fairness, it always makes things taste better! There are some great seasonings out there like Jalapeno salt and Habanero salt that you can use in order to add a punch of flavor while still practicing restraint.
• Bacon. Most party-goers will enthusiastically consume things with bacon added if only to say they tried it. All the better if you succeed. I do not recommend that most new or novice chefs bother trying to add bacon to ice cream, even as a professional I have found it exceedingly difficult to avoid it turning into ice cream with bits of soggy meat. Come to think of it, you could, however, serve some fresh, crispy maple bacon bits on the side in a bowl to sprinkle on top along with nuts, cherries and whipped cream!
• For both sweet and savory (salty, meaty, hearty) dishes, add just a pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, ginger, clove to the recipe to change the depth of flavor. You can even play with curry or cumin if you're really adventurous, just be extremely cautious and only add a very very little bit at a time.
• You can add mint or basil to either savory or sweet dishes, but take great care in how you add it, how much you add and what flavor profiles you are adding it to. If you are unsure, allow yourself opportunity to experiment before you need to have the dish ready for others to consume, or write me specifically and let me know what the dish you want to alter is, and how you think you'd like to enhance it. I can help you individually with what you need.
• You can also take something basic and add a sauce, like a peanut butter chocolate cream pie that I made a few weeks ago- It was a pretty typical pie recipe, but I  added a sweet, grapey red wine sauce on the side for people to put on the plate with their slice, so that they got a PB&J sort of flavor profile.
• You may also be able to mix up different recipes. Again with the pie crust example, If you have a recipe that calls for a graham cracker crust, you may choose to mix it up, and make one with a different kind of cookie or cracker, like Oreos, Club crackers, Nilla Wafers, even pretzels! Though I prefer, when working with something salty like pretzels, to mix the crumbs with a sweeter cookie like the Oreos, Grahams or Nilla wafers.
• Pay attention to popular flavor pairings. If you have a great recipe for something that is heavy on caramel, you may have noticed the recent trend of adding salt to caramel desserts. You don't, however, see a lot of "sea-salted raspberries". Keep in mind what is already appealing and popular when you're messing with recipes. I'm not saying you shouldn't try a little salt on your raspberry dream bars, but I BEG you to taste and taste again before you serve it to a bunch of people and get a reputation for bad tasting food. 
• One more option is to consider taking all the elements of a classic dish and making it into a less conventional state- for instance, you may freeze your cream pie, or you may make a milkshake with all the flavors of banana pudding. You may take a popular punch or beverage and freeze it into small Popsicles- root beer float on a stick, anybody? You may even simply take the elements of a loose dessert, or one with lots of components, and make it easier to eat in a party setting. One example of this is that I once took all the components of a banana split, spooned small portions of each onto a crepe, and made little sweet dessert spring-rolls. They were cute, clever, delicious, and really very simple to make. 
• I even took that idea a little further because I froze a few of them, stuck a Popsicle stick into them, battered them in pancake batter and fried them. You can fry ANYTHING. This is not necessarily for novice cooks, though- hot oil is nothing to take lightly. Please exercise caution and obtain more experienced supervision whenever cooking with hot oil until you are comfortable and experienced in doing it without help.

I am excited to hear what signature dishes my readers can come up with! Please email me your new signature ideas, recipes, successes and disasters. If you send me photos, all the better! I hope to post a follow up blog to this in a few weeks featuring y'all's culinary adventures!

Servin' Up Savory Steaks

Dear Suzy,

Today for dinner I took a rack of ribs, rubbed it with oil and rib rub, wrapped it in foil, then let it sit in the fridge. 2.5 hours before I wanted to serve dinner, I took it out, opened the foil, poured some coke on it, and cooked it in the oven for 2 hours at 325. It was one of the easiest and most delicious entree recipes I've ever made. I enjoy making recipes that are stupidly easy, and while that back story doesn't have much to do with my question, I am just humbly patting myself on the back for how awesome I am. Do you have any other suggestions for a quick, easy, foolproof way to cook various cuts of meat?

Hungry,

Kashmir in the Kitchen

Dear Kashmir,

I'm glad to post your question, self-promotion and all, because you've provided a great recipe for my readers to try! I'll add a few more simple ways to cook meat that I've found helpful as a lazy creature who loves food. There are multiple styles of cooking represented, so if you're not interested in reading the recipe, just move on until you reach black text again.

Stuffed Chicken:

- Chicken breasts (one per person, or according to personal serving size preferences)
- Pepperonis or other italian meat such as sausage or pastrami (bologna not recommended)
- Mozzerella, swiss, gouda, or even provalone cheese (a few thin slices per serving)
- 1 egg, whisked or shaken
- 1/2-1/3 cup grated Parmesian
- 1/4 cup of flour
- 3-4 dashes pepper
- 4-5 dashes italian seasonings (its worth it to buy them pre-mixed, but typically basil, rosemary, garlic powder, parsley)
- 2 dashes salt
- 4-5 tbsp olive oil
- Optional: sauce (basil pesto, marinara, even alfredo!)

• If breasts are thick, simply slice it halfway down most of the way through and lay open- if they are pretty thin, (less than 1 inch) place on a cutting board and smack all over with something flat, such as a tenderizing hammer, measuring cup, rolling pin, or forehead until chicken is thin and flat enough to fold in half easily without tearing.
• Place cheese and meat in the middle of the chicken breast towards one side, leaving a small outer edge uncovered.
• Fold the chicken over the stuffing, leaving as few gaps as possible between the layers of chicken (this is not an exact science, nothing will die if you have a leaky chicken breast, I promise!)
• In a wide bowl or on a plate, combine parmesan, flour, pepper, salt, and herbs.
• Put olive oil into a skillet and begin heating on low to medium heat.
• Carefully dip chicken breasts into egg, (this is called dredging) and then coat in flour mixture.
• Test the heat of your oil by dripping just one small drop of water into the oil. If it does nothing, it is not hot enough- if it pops really loud and splatters over a foot high, take it off the heat for about 2 minutes, then move it back on and it should be perfect, crackling and moderately splattering when contacted with a tiny drop of water. 
• At this point, place the chicken carefully into the oil in the pan, CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH THE OIL!
• When the bottom layer of your stuffed chicken has turned completely white, use tongs or two forks to flip the chicken. The chicken should be completely cooked, white and brown. If you aren't experienced, cut the thickest part of the chicken and make sure there is no pink left in the meat.
• Place the chicken onto a paper towel while you lightly dress the plate with your sauce, then serve!

***This dish is not only italian; you can use the same techniques with a few changes to make a whole new dish! for instance, if you use chorizo rather than italian sausage, cheddar or monterey for the cheese, taco seasoning in place of the italian seasonings, and dress it with salsa or ranchero sauce, it will be delicious, latin, and noone will know its the same dish!

My favorite simple way of cooking MOST types of meat is stir-fry or skillet saute. You can use strip-steak, chicken, pork, shrimp, crawfish, scallops, even more daring seafood such as squid and octopus! In the interest of giving you as much information as I can without making this post torturously long, I am going to give you a few lists of ingredients that go well together with meats in a stir-fry style. You don't necessarily need a wok to do this style of cooking! A (preferably non-stick), greased skillet that adequately fits the quantity of meat you are cooking is perfectly fine to do the job.

I will color code the ingredients so that if you use at least one of each color you will get the desired flavor, but ideally you will experiment and mix and match the ingredients to make new and different flavors! Those ingredients in BLUE are purely optional, just for added awesomeness.

Sweet and Spicy:

Soy Sauce

Teryaki Sauce

Grape juice 

Orange juice 

Pineapple juice

Frozen juice concentrate (only a tablespoon or so)

Garlic Powder

Minced Garlic

Onion Powder

Chili Powder

Chili Pepper Flakes

Sriracha Sauce

Chili Paste (found in a lot of Korean dishes)

Fresh Jalapenos

Pickled Jalapenos

Sweet Pickled Peppers

Fresh Bell Peppers

Fresh Pineapple pieces

mandarin oranges

Hot and Sour:

Vinagarette Salad Dressing (Italian works well, too)

Vinegar (Apple Cider or Red Wine are best)

Lemon Juice

Lime Juice

Lemon Pepper

Sriracha Sauce

Chili Powder

Chili Paste

Cayenne
Spicy Mustard
Jalapeno or habanero Salt

Fresh Jalapenos

Fresh Hot Peppers (poblano, habanero, chilis, etc)

Pickled Jalapenos (preferably not sweet, but if that's what you like, go for it!)

Green and Red Bell Peppers

Fresh Pineapple

Garlic powder

Minced Garlic

Soy Sauce

Now what I love about this style of cooking is you can marinate the meat in these ingredients and cook it as-is, you can marinate it and then further flavor it by adding the same ingredients fresh to the pan, or if you're in a real hurry you can just toss it all into a hot skillet and cook it together with no forethought required. 

My favorite trick with this type of cooking is the use of Vinegarette Salad Dressings. Something about the combination of vinegar and oil reacts with the heat to not only create an exciting punch of flavor, but also makes little crisplettes in the pan of what appears to be burned bits, but it's actually just power-packed, exciting bites of flavor that you can serve and eat intermingled with the meats and veggies.

The flavors listed above work together in general, not only for stir-fry. You can combine the dry ingredients and make a rub for grilling, any of the ingredients as a marinade for searing or baking, and you can use more of the liquid ingredients, seasoned with the other ingredients, in a saucepan, reduce and let it steep a little while, and serve it on top or on the side of your less seasoned entrees. In THIS context, these flavors could even be used in preparing Tuna Steaks (one of my personal favorites.)

Please send me your own questions about cooking, romance, friendship, life, decorating, literature, whatever! My email address is asksuzyadvice@gmail.com, but for added convenience you can simply click the "email us" link on the right-hand side of this page.

PLEASE SHARE ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER if you like what you're getting on this blog! Please write me with feedback if you'd prefer to get something different out of it! Thanks!

Healthy Tex-Mex? Surely You Jest!

Dear Suzy,

I'm planning a dinner of enchiladas, and I'd like to serve a colorful vegetable as a side that's not salad. What other sides can I make?

Hungry,

Don Quixote in a Windmill

Dear Don,

The most common vegetables served alongside tex-mex are Onions, Bell Peppers, Jalapeno and Poblano Peppers, Squash, Zucchini, Mushrooms and Tomatoes. If you have other vegetables that are your personal preference, you can mingle them with some of these other veggies and they'll fit right in! Now for preparation, I suggest one of the following methods:

1) In a skillet, melt a tablespoon or so of butter. If you prefer to use olive oil or canola oil, that will work too- just use enough to coat the pan + a tiny dollop more, and get the pan hot. Toss in some onions. I personally am not a big fan of eating pieces of onion by themselves, so when I make this, I use minced onions- you can even buy dry onion flakes and rehydrate a tablespoon in about 1/8 a cup of water. Otherwise, use any size cut you like. Cook the onions on medium-high heat until they begin to caramelize (turn color). Add the rest of your veggies and cook them, stirring regularly, over medium heat. Here's the trick! Douse the pan in a few shakes of taco seasoning, the kind you can get in a package for about 40 cents, and continue stirring. Cook until the veggies all get soft and take on a slightly darker version of their natural colors.

2) Julienne your vegetables (cut them in strips). Coat a dark, preferably cast iron skillet in oil or bacon fat. Heat the pan until it is quite hot. Toss the harder and bigger veggies in first (like onions, peppers, squash), and stir them over high heat. Then add the remaining vegetables (like tomatoes, mushrooms) to the mix and continue tossing and stirring them over high heat until they all start taking on some nice color and are seared in a few places. Turn your stove to "warm" and serve these "fajita" style veggies directly out of the hot pan. For added awesomeness you may want to sprinkle the whole thing with lime juice, and garnish on the plate with a few cold slices of fresh avocado.

What I love about both of these methods is that unlike steaming or boiling, the veggies take on a darker, more robust color and flavor. They mingle flavors and enhance each other, and all those delicious vitamins get trapped inside, instead of leaking out into water.

Please send me your food questions, and any other questions you have, at asksuzyadvice@gmail.com, or click the "email us" link on the right hand side of the page for your convenience. Thanks!

Welcome To My Blog!

I'll start this blog with a brief explanation to address the most obvious questions I would ask, were I to see the page's title, which are: 

1) What will the posts on this page be about?

and

2) What makes this chick think she's qualified to be doling out advice?

So to answer the first question, I'll respond to the second. I have always had an abnormally large number of people coming to me for advice on... well, you name it- family stuff, matters of faith, dilemmas created by maybe making a big mistake and wondering how to handle the consequences, translations for my male friends of "girl language" and translations for my female friends of "boy language" (because I happen to be a female who speaks "boy" remarkably well), hair, school, work... and admittedly more often than anything else, lately, dating and relationship opinions. My credentials are simply that after a number of years of offering my opinions (usually solicited by the recipient) it's been pointed out by closer friends that I'm actually right more often than not- a lot more often, if I may say so (which I do, because it's my blog, writer's liberty). Anyways- ultimately the simple answer is that as of now I claim no qualifications worth much except the continued stream of people who know me wanting to know my thoughts about their troubles. Beyond that I do have pretty uncanny intuition and a strong penchant for picking up on context and subtexts that a lot of people miss. I am also an avid people-watcher because I love to understand why people do what they do and I prefer, in the long run, to learn from other people's hard life lessons so that I can avoid going through them myself. I can honestly promise, readers, that I will only ever give opinions wanting the absolute best for whomever ask for them.

THAT SAID, what will this page be about? I will begin, for the first few posts, by explaining a useful metaphor that I've found myself sharing with 3 different friends within 2 weeks' time, after which they all encouraged me to write it down for others to see. By the time those posts are finished, whatever small following I may have developed will be asked and encouraged to send in questions, much in the same style as those newspaper advice columns, about life, love, hair, self-image, whatever. I will then sort the questions and a majority of subsequent posts will be my replies to the questions- this means that you- the readers- will ultimately be the ones who determine where these posts will go. I encourage you to write in! My email address for questions is: asksuzyadvice@gmail.com and I will prefer that you refrain from posting questions you want answered in the comments of other posts, just to make it a bit less confusing.