What To Do When Life Gives You Cherries

Soak them in vodka and pop them in your mouth anytime the feelings is right. Or you could make fresh cherry ginger sauce and a loaf of cherry and dark chocolate biscotti.

For the record, the vodka option would have been my preference but then I would have to find an occasion to enjoy them.

The cherries were courtesy of Mrs. Bloggerman's boss' parent's farm in Washington State (that's 3 possesses in one sentence in case you were concerned). But what to do with a big Bag of cherries?

The first recipe was very simple. The sauce is just a few cups of chopped cherries (remember to take out the pits!) 3/4 cup of sugar and about 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar. Stove it on medium heat stirring frequently for 10 minutes. Sprinkle ground ginger to taste. Pour over grilled chicken and boom you have chicken and cherries. It's delicious, just not exciting.

Then today I tried the biscotti. The first loaf was cherry free, featuring milk chocolate chips and chopped walnuts. Solid and consistent. The cherries went into the second batch along with some dark chocolate chips. Good, but I had to add extra flour at the end to compensate with the liquid from the cherries. What I forgot was more sugar to balance the flour. The result was a more of a chocolate cherry bread then a biscotti but it is still worth a bite.

Until next time may your stems be knotted and your pits not swallowed.

Chocolate Chip/Walnut

Add caption

Label Me...If You Must!

I bet if I went back through the archives of this wonderful piece of www trash I could find that at least 75% of my posts contain angry rants against a group or category. Knowing me the way I do (hey I have 35+ years of experience in that department) most of those rants are against inanimate objects. I just like attacking things that can't possibly attack back and it's easier then finding out the human force behind those objects and calling them out by name. So why don't we continue

Today's object of my ire is the bag of salad I opened the other day. Quick background here. Bag salad has got to be one of the most kick ass inventions in the past 20 years. If we believe the folks at Fresh Express (and when was the last time a major company lied to us???) they developed the bag salad in 1989. So we're looking at 20 or so years of convenience. Growing up we'd make our own salad by actually buying a whole head of lettuce and assorted other vegetables, cleaning them, cutting them up into the appropriate sizes, and mixing them in a bowl. We'd then take that bowl and put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold and fresh.

And now we come to the point of today's rant...keeping those salad bags fresh. The salad makers don't have a problem with it. The supermarkets don't seem to have a problem with it. Most customers don't seem to have an issue with it. Then why (in very small print) at the top of the bag is there a warning that says, "Keep Refrigerated".

WHAT??? Yep...these salad nazis actually want us to keep our cut and bagged vegetables cold! 

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either.

I can't imagine that this warning label was always there. For most people it's just common sense: something is cold in the supermarket, you should keep it cold in your house...it's fairly simple logic. However, it couldn't have been that simple. At some point in the last 23 years some redneck, goober went to the Food Lion or Giant or Ralph's and thought wow....lettuce already cut up....that would be great out at the NASCAR race. Said goober left the bag out on his counter figuring that science would by now allow for salad to sit out on the counter for weeks without going bad. After all the Bible never says, "thou shalt refrigerated salad greens".

In the big picture, this is really a small thing and doesn't effect my enjoyment of the salad or the meal that it accompanies. But I have a lot of time on my hands and this seems like something I should share with you.
 
On another label front the dog has some new treats. She is chowing down on what are essentially doggie Oreos.  The challenge here (besides getting her to eat her own food), is that these are really good. I give her a few and have one for me. Here's the problem (not that they are made for dogs) there is no nutritional label on the box. How many calories am I taking in?  Luckily the internet tells me they are only 38 calories per cookie so I'm still in good shape!

Now you know...race down to your kitchen, run to the counter, grab those bags of shreded iceberg, carrots, and radishes and get them in your chill chest ASAP!  You have to read those labels!