Cooking Show: Day-After Thanksgiving Recipes!

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it wasn't difficult to come up with a theme for our recent cooking show.

Instead of preparing traditional recipes, however, I decided to focus on leftovers.

I need to confess that I actually roast a pre-Thanksgiving turkey, and perhaps make an extra batch of mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce as well, ensuring that there will be post-Thanksgiving leftovers...can you relate?  

I find it helpful to have a fridge full of leftovers because it makes meal-planning a cinch when I'm in the midst of my decorating frenzy during the days after Thanksgiving...

I was assisted by my friend, Maureen.  We made batches of No-Stress Cranberry Sauce and Make-Ahead Gravy.  This is a cooking show after all.  We felt the need to actually cook something before we started assembling our leftovers!

If you've never made homemade cranberry sauce, please give it a try!  I would usually strongly suggest making gravy using pan drippings, but a recipe like this one that you can make ahead before you even put the bird into the oven can certainly come in handy!

(Click on the highlighted titles to be taken to the recipes.)

Cranberry/Brie Phyllo Tartlets with Pistachios

One more phyllo tart recipe to add to the repertoire. FOUR ingredients!!! 

Great way to use your leftover cranberry sauce! And so easy to whip up a batch to fortify yourself during your post-Thanksgiving decorating frenzy (hint-hint).

Loaded Leftover Mashed Potatoes

If you're wondering what to do with leftover mashed potatoes, look no further!  Soooo good.  

Simply reheat your mashed potatoes and add your favorite toppings!

Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Wraps

Fill them up, give them a quick sear, dip them into gravy.  A one-stop-shopping recipe for Thanksgiving leftovers!

Thank you for following along.  I hope that you have a very Happy Thanksgiving...

...and a very happy day after Thanksgiving as well!

Cooking Show: Breakfast for Dinner, Part III

It's been a while since we've filmed a show with a "Breakfast for Dinner" theme (click here and here to be taken to recipes from the previous shows).  I was joined by my friend, Maureen. We did our best to prepare a few breakfast recipes that are also great at dinnertime!

I love breakfast recipes, but I don't typically have time to make them in the morning hours. At dinnertime, however--when I've usually put aside the time to actually cook something--I find that making breakfast can actually save time, because many breakfast recipes require less time to prepare than traditional dinner recipes.

(Click on the recipe title to be taken to the printable recipe.)

Hash Brown Frittata

Layered with hash browns, ham, eggs, veggies and cheese!  

 Bacon, Spinach & Tomato Breakfast Wraps with Avocado

These are one of my favorite wraps.  I would eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  Or breakfast, lunch AND dinner!

 Apple Dutch Baby Puff Pancake

You could serve this topped with maple syrup, whipped cream...or ice cream...

Madras

The perfect choice if you're feeling like you might want to mix up a special fruity drink to go with your breakfast-dinner!

Cooking Show: What to Make When It's Too Hot to Cook!

Our recent cooking show didn't require much cooking.  

My friend, Lisa, assisted me. We focused on preparing recipes that aren't going to heat up your kitchen while you prepare them.  Sandwiches, wraps, tacos, parfaits and drinks!

Creamy-Dreamy Orange Martini

Would you like to make a drink that tastes like a Creamsicle®, but doesn't involve ice cream?  We've got you covered!

The secret ingredient is whipped cream vodka.

 Triple-Decker Club Sandwiches with Lemon-Garlic Aioli

These sandwiches should be made to suit your taste!  Use your absolute favorite ingredients and have fun stacking them together.  Click on the link to be taken to a list of suggested ingredients and assembly instructions.

Chicken Guacamole Wraps

Buying a store-cooked rotisserie chicken from the supermarket means that YOU won't have any cooking to do!  Just stir the ingredients together, wrap and enjoy.

Lime-Cilantro Shrimp Tacos

This was the only recipe that we prepared which required a teensy bit of cooking.  Just about 5 minutes to sauté the shrimp.

As if the heat from the habañero peppers wasn't enough, we decided to heat up the kitchen to cook the shrimp.  

This recipe is crazy delicious.

 Totally worth cooking for a few minutes on a hot night and heating up your kitchen just a bit.

Blackberry Parfaits

My daughters were both enthusiastic taste-testers when I was tweaking this recipe for the cooking show.  It's a fancier version of their favorite childhood summer snack! When they were younger and I was desperate for them to not eat junk food snacks, I would give them skewers of fruit to dip into yogurt with whipped cream mixed into it.  Now, twenty years later, it's their version of comfort food!

Cooking Show: It's a Wrap!

Our recent cooking show featured an assortment of wrap sandwiches--Southwestern, Italian and Asian-inspired.

Although each type of wrap has its own distinct flavor, the method of preparation was the same: start with shredded chicken (use a rotisserie chicken!), add assorted veggies, drizzle with a flavorful dressing.

Caprese Chicken Wraps with Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil. My favorite combo!

Asian Chicken Wraps with Ginger Teriyaki Dressing

Always a hit in my house.  Loaded with fresh, crunchy veggies, it will curb your craving for Chinese takeout and you can pat yourself on the back for making a healthier choice!

Southwestern Chicken Rollups

I unabashedly admit that this is my favorite.  Combine the chicken with the dressing, then customize the rollups with assorted add-ins--avocado, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce.  I'll take the works, please.

Butterscotch Pudding

Pudding from scratch, so creamy and so dreamy!

Cooking Show--Tomato Recipes

I feel like I beat this subject to death...but am I the only one who wants to skip right through winter and into summer?

I'm not even going to pretend that winter tomatoes can compare to summer tomatoes...but cooking with ingredients that remind me of summer is one way to beat the winter blues.  Bring on the tomato recipes!

We started with BLT Salad with Buttermilk Dressing.

So simple, yet so good!  The assorted tiny tomatoes are very sweet and flavorful, drizzled with a creamy buttermilk dressing...I can close my eyes and almost feel like summer is here.  Almost.

Italian Chicken Wraps with Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette

A couple of tablespoons of sun-dried tomatoes in the dressing provide a big punch of flavor!

Creamy Tuscan Shrimp with Pasta

Another recipe where a handful of sun-dried tomatoes add a wallop of flavor!

My friend, Trish, was cooking with me and we discussed adding a few mushrooms in...we ultimately decided against this, but next time I make this recipe I'm planning on adding some 'shrooms!

 Oatmeal Sheetcake with Caramel/Coconut Frosting

Okay, this recipe certainly departs from our tomato theme, but Dan the Awesome Cameraman is a fan of all things sweet. We haven't filmed a dessert since November and I want to keep him happy!

This dense cake is oozing with cinnamon flavor, and the caramel topping (perfectly browned by placing the frosted cake under the broiler for a minute) adds a crunchy texture.

It's a Wrap...Chicken & Strawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

September gives me recipe whiplash!!

The temperatures start to drop, I happily cook my way down the path of pumpkins & apples, soups & stews...and then BAM!

Another 90-degree day.

The last thing I want to do is heat up my kitchen.

I really don't mind...it gives me a chance to prepare and finally share this recipe, because despite it being my go-to salad this summer I haven't put it on the blog yet.

My excuse for not blogging about this salad, given that I've made it so frequently:  

It's so quick and easy to prepare, it's something that I usually make on the fly, when I'm in a hurry to throw dinner together.  On those hectic nights the last thing I can be bothered with is stopping to snap pictures for the blog.  

I wasn't in a hurry as I was preparing it this time, however...just a little wiped out from the heat, hehe.

Today's Playlist

• "Black Math'...The White Stripes
• "Sins of My Youth"...Neon Trees
• "Jerk It Out"...Caesars
• "Is It Any Wonder"...Keane
• "Psycho"...The Sonics
• "Train In Vain"...The Clash
• "I'm Shakin'"...Jack White
• "Learn To Fly"...Foo Fighters

Chicken & Strawberry Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette (serves 6)

Printable Recipe

Vinaigrette ingredients:

• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• salt & pepper, to taste

Salad Ingredients:

• 3 cups cooked chicken, bite-sized pieces
• 6 cups salad greens
• 2 cups sliced strawberries
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles
• balsamic vinaigrette, see recipe above (or use 1/2 cup of your favorite prepared vinaigrette)

Optional: Flour tortillas, for wraps

To make the vinaigrette:

Whisk vinaigrette ingredients together in a small bowl.  Set aside while you prepare your salad.

Gather your ingredients.

Wash and slice the strawberries, chop the lettuce, cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks, chop the pecans.

Place the salad greens, diced chicken and sliced strawberries into a large bowl.  Drizzle with the balsamic vinaigrette.

Toss to combine.  Sprinkle with the pecans and feta.

Or serve the pecans and feta on the side, so the family members (ahem) who do not like nuts or cheese will eat the salad without complaint, and those of us who do like nuts and cheese can add them to our heart's content.

And at this point I grabbed some tortillas and decided to make the salad into wraps.

Sometimes it's hard to convince Mr. Terrific that salad can be a satisfying dinner...present it in a wrap, however, and he's on board!

So I piled the salad into a wrap instead of a bowl, and added a sprinkle of feta and pecans.

Enjoy.

Buffalo Chicken Wraps and Stream of Consciousness

The cooking show that I haven't told you about yet.

You know how sometimes there's something that you are going to do, but it makes you really nervous and to avoid stressing unnecessarily you push it to the back of your mind so that you don't even think about it until it's actually happening?

That's the state of being that I have been in for the last month.  I believe it's called denial.

Oh, I knew that the day was going to come, because I promised and we scheduled and set the date and declared the theme of  "easy things to prepare for dinner at back-to-school time when your house is crazy and you don't have time to cook because you're trying to get into a routine but nobody's really adjusted to the after-school schedule" or something like that, because like I said I tried not to dwell on it.

And then Dan the Camera Man showed up at precisely the time that he was scheduled to be there and it. was. time. and since I hadn't really allowed myself to think about it I wasn't as nervous as I could have been and I wasn't at all stressed like I expected I would be.

Not even when he set up his big lights and big cameras in front of me and then we had to shut the air conditioning off because of the humming noise and it got really hot because my oven was set at 400 degrees and my face was all shiny and sweaty from the hot oven and bright lights and no air conditioning on a hot day.

This is all that I remember:  1. Dan pointing at one of the cameras, and in his lovely Irish brogue proclaiming, "this is your camera, Fran."

2. I was so grateful that Jack and Nick, two boys that have been on my baseball team for the past three years, were there to help me cook and provide someone for me to talk to.  I can not convey how grateful I am that these two fabulous 15-year-old boys chose to spend a couple of hours on a summer afternoon cooking with their baseball coach.  Had they not been there, I would have had to talk to Dan's aforementioned camera while I cooked and I would imagine that talking to an emotionless, inanimate object like a camera would have me mumbling and grumbling to myself (a la Kreacher the house elf from the Harry Potter movies).  Or maybe I would have just stared at the camera, frozen and unable to speak (like on that episode of The Brady Bunch when Cindy Brady is on the televised school quiz show and freezes when she sees the red flashing light on the camera).

3. It was hot, my face was very sweaty and I didn't care.

4. When it was over, I wanted everyone to eat all of the food we just made.

.

After all the cooking and filming was done, I took this picture of Dan the awesome camera man.

And here are Nick and Jack. Without them, I would have been a basket case.

What did we cook?  Well, the theme of "food that is easy to prepare when you're crunched for time at mealtime" meant lots of advance prep and then just putting the ingredients together.  The only thing that we actually cooked while taping the show was an apple tart that I will post later this week.  We also prepared

Pasta Salad and three types of chicken wraps: Caesar (click here to go to my recipe for Chicken Caesar Salad), Cranberry-Walnut and Buffalo-Style which I'll post in a moment.

When we taped the show, I used grilled chicken that I had made in advance, but store-made rotisserie chicken works just as well.

Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Wraps and Baseball Really Does Make Everything Better

I refuse to get on my elliptical machine unless I have something good to watch while I torture myself  exercise.  It is just so gosh-darn boring any other way.

When I couldn't get my ipad to stream a video earlier this week, I went to plan B. Plan B is to read a book while riding my recumbent bike, since reading while standing on the elliptical--a stationary-yet-moving piece of equipment--requires more coordination than I possess.  I love, love, love to read so I was excited to have an excuse not to get on the elliptical (I usually force myself to use the elliptical instead of the bike because I get a much better--read SWEATY--workout).   Sitting and peddling on a bike while enjoying a good story is not such a great workout, but it is so much more enjoyable.

There was a minor problem, however.

This is the book that I have been reading lately.

And by lately, I mean approximately for the last month.  Or even longer, if you go back about 7 years to the last time I tried to read Life of Pi.  And now I digress.

I'm not a quitter.  I hate to start something and not finish it.  I can only remember giving up on one other book, ever.  It was around 25 years ago, Mr. Terrific bought me Stephen King's It, because It was over 1000 pages long.  I read books quickly, and if I'm reading a really good book I start wishing that the book were longer.  Mr. Terrific thought he was doing me a favor by buying me a really long book.

Except I didn't like the book.  After about 600 pages, I decided that I had read enough about children being terrorized by a clown.

Which is more than I can tell you about Life of Pi. The last time I attempted to read this book,  I read over 100 pages and I can not tell you what I read.  I gave up, even though it was on the best seller list, even though a friend of mine (whose opinion I totally respect and trust) told me it was a fabulous book.  I mean, 100 pages was a serious effort, right?  And for me to not even be able to remember what I read--I feel bad saying this--I felt like I was just wasting my time, and all because I was being stubborn and didn't want to quit.

But quit I did, I was happy to stop reading it and never gave it another thought...until the movie that was based on the book won a few Oscars at this year's academy awards.  I didn't see the movie, but I started thinking to myself, hmmmm...maybe I should give that book another go.

So about a month ago, I started reading Life of Pi AGAIN.  And since the only time of day that I can really find time to read is when I get into bed--and since I am on the verge of total exhaustion at that late hour--if there is nothing to spark my interest (read: if something is boring), I fall asleep really quickly.

I don't have a lot to show for the last month or so that I have been attempting to read this book.  Every night,  my eyes immediately just start rolling around inside of my head, anywhere from one word to a few paragraphs into it, which leaves me stuck on page 23.  That's right.  23 pages, in an entire month.  I would usually expect to read 3 or 4 books in a month.  But I'm stuck.  And I do mean stuck.

This is the page that I have been stuck on for the last week or so.  I get into bed, open the book to the page that I have dog-eared (don't judge me) to mark my place, and I ponder why pi=3.14159265 (I can't help it, my math-geekiness always expands it and yes I am jealous of everyone who has memorized more of these randomly-distributed digits than I have), visions of circles and their ratios of circumference to diameter cloud my thinking and then I realize that this tiny little equation is the only thing I have read in this book that I can relate to!!! 

 And then I close the book and turn out the light and lie there thinking that reading before bed is no fun.

Okay, back to the non-streaming ipad and working out on the bike instead of the elliptical...

So the last thing I want to read while working out is Life of Pi, especially when I could be reading something I enjoy.  I decided I would just go ahead and read something else while I exercised.

This is where Baseball Makes Everything Better comes in.

The Bird.  If you are a baseball fan, and you grew up in the '70's, surely you remember him?  I unabashedly admit that I really, really love the game of baseball and I always have...and I bought this book because even though I have always been a die-hard Red Sox fan there is no way that any baseball fan who ever saw Mark Fidrych pitch could not help but like him, and I certainly liked him.  He was so much fun to watch, and he played like he was having a blast: talking to himself, running around to congratulate his teammates, getting down on his hands and knees to smooth the dirt on the pitcher's mound.  

I bought this book a few months ago, and I gave it to Mr. Terrific because I thought he would enjoy reading it, but I am the one who is enjoying it.  I'm enjoying it so much that I have decided I will not ever waste one more second on any book that I'm not enjoying...and I'm probably going to have to remind myself to come back and read this blogpost if I ever get it in my head again that I really should give Life of Pi another try!