New Holiday Tradition for my family

Hi Everyone.  Hope you all had a great holiday how ever you celebrate. We thought we were going to have a new little one over christmas weekend but it was a false alarm. Haley wants to have it tonight or I should say tomorrow morning on New Years day. She wants little Eli to be the first baby born so she can get all kinds of free stuff!  My little girl has always wanted to be the first at just about everything and shes just a weeee bit spoiled but I don't think this time she is going to get her way. There have been no signs of a baby showing up today, just to be on the safe side tho we are all staying in tonight.

Now to the new tradition: I needed a quick appetizer one night and I came up with fried artichokes with a cream sauce and artichoke bread patties. We make and eat alot of food around here durring the holidays, alot of it is fattening but all of it is better for you than the traditional stuff. This new recipe is no different its not low cal but its made with real ingredients and that is very important. Keep in mind this is a holiday or party appetizer not an everyday meal.

And yes these are fried but not deep fried and remember I always use grapeseed oil or denatured coconut oil so it will be ok to fry these. I am not sure how they would work baked but if you try it let me know how they come out. And remember use as many organic ingredients as possible I always do; but sometimes we just can't so do the best you can and feel good about your effort.
You will need:
2 cans of artichokes (in brine, drained)
1 1/2 c seasoned bread crumbs
1/2 c    grated pecorino romano cheese
1/2tsp  galic powder
1/2 tsp black pepper
1-2      eggs (or if you don't eat eggs, substitute 1/2 c milk or plain soymilk)
1 TB    water to add to the eggs (omit if not using eggs)
About 1/2 inch of grapeseed oil in the bottom of a hot skillet
Method:
In a medium bowl whip the eggs with the water, set aside (or just pour the milk into the bowl). In low larger bowl mix the bread crumbs and cheese together add garlic powder and black pepper you can add more than what I have if you want, set this aside.
Set the skillet onto burner and heat over medium heat add the oil. Cut the artichokes in half (top to bottom) and dip into the egg mixture first; then dredge in the breadcrumbs, place into hot skillet and fry on both sides until golden. Place on several layers of paper toweling to drain. Continue this until all have been fryed. Add the left over eggs to the remaining bread crumbs along with any pieces of artichoke that fell off durring dredging. Add some extra milk if you need to to make a thick batter. Form the batter into patties (or spoon into pan flattening to form a patty) and fry in left over oil. Set aside on paper towels to drain.

For The Cream Sauce:
In a small saucepan over medium/low heat melt 1/4 stick of butter or earth balance, add 1 1/2 cups of 1/2 and 1/2 or vitamin d milk. When milk starts to bubble add 3/4 cup grated pecorino romano cheese and stir until sauce thickens. Serve over artichokes with bread patties and some marinara sauce if you want.

Growing Pains

Wow!  The bakery is growing alot right now. We are now in California currently we have a small presence but we are about to have a much larger one. I think its because we have just introduced our bakers dozen value pack. It seems to be going over really well. Anyway this is all keeping me very busy which keeps me from updating my blog on a regular basis so please forgive me.

I did want to tell you about this really great asian dish I made the other night. I used Quorn chicken strips and my family didin't even know. This is how I did it.

Clean and slice into strips:
Broccoli
Carrots (baby ones are sweet and tender)
onions
Mushrooms (slice like you normally would, if they are very wide cut in half)
And any other vegetables you think would go good or you have in your fridge
Wash a couple handfulls of fresh spinach (more if you like alot of greens)
METHOD
Heat a wok or skillet and add enough peanut, coconut or sesame oil to coat bottom of pan. Throw in the veggies all except mushrooms and spinach and some red pepper flakes and toss around in oil, sautee until just beginning to get tender. Add the Quorn chicken and mushrooms continue to sautee stirring occassionally. Season with garlic, ginger, curry powder and liquid aminos. Sprinkle with a little brown sugar or fructose. Cover and let simmer about 3-5 more minutes. Be carefull not to let veggies over cook stir in about a tablespoon or 2 of General Tso's bottled sauce if you want and then add the spinach last and toss with all of the juices. This is great without the General Tso's but it adds a sweet/tangyness and a little more juice to spoon over rice.
The great thing about this is, like all of my recipe suggestions; it's just that a suggestion ment to teach you how to put flavors together so that you can use what you learn from one recipe and make adjustments to turn it into your own. For instance this recipe can be made your own by using as much of the spices as you like. If you like garlic use more if you don't like ginger go light on that. Also if you use denatured coconut oil it will be tasteless but if you don't it will give it a nice coconut flavor and how kool to add some unsweetened coconut flakes to this. Or serve over coconut rice.
Another idea would be to substitute another green or seaweed for the spinach adjusting the seasoning to match the flavor of the green for instance omitting the sugar.
Enjoy over your favorite rice or try over quinoa for added protein.

I love passing on these ideas and would love to know what you do with them so if anyone wants to let me know how they tweeked it to make it their own I would really like to hear form you.