Tasty Bites: Panic Pizza

By Candy, RN (Steele the Day)

Why panic? Because yesterday Ginny sent me a message “Are you going to have a post for me tomorrow?” YIKES! Somehow between trying to get my computer humming again and Thursday, time slipped away. And when time slips away, I fall back on pizza.

I went to the photo archives and sure enough, I found one of my favorites. Add to that the fact that I keep pizza dough in the refrigerator most of the time, thanks to Pioneer Woman. Up until I “met her” (I wish), I could never make pizza dough right. So with a couple of modifications, here’s my honey-wheat pizza dough stand-by. It’s supposed to keep in the refrigerator for three or four days, and I may or may not have used it after 10 days and it turned out just fine.

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Tasty Bites: The Tomatillo Test

By Candy, RN (Steele the Day)

Tasty Bites is a guinea pig this week.

Up until this week, I’ve never had a tomatillo. I was a casual observer at the grocery store the other day when I curiously watched two women arguing over the tomatillo bin. They were probably discussing something other than a little Mexican tomato, but I grabbed a few out of curiosity and purchased them. Then I went home to figure out what to do with these little “Barbie” tomatoes. They are strange little fruits, with a papery skin and once that is removed, they have sort of a sticky coating. They smell a bit like a green tomato, though they are only a distant cousin and more closely related to the ground cherry.

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Tasty Bites: Mission: Meatless

By Candy, RN (Steele the Day)

One of the reasons we haven’t embraced meatless meals in the mainstream is because so many people are disappointed that the end result doesn’t taste like meat. We haven’t learned to enjoy the taste of a good healthy protein without meat. That’s understandable, as most of us grew up with meat as a main course.

This is a tasty sandwich that I hesitate to call a burger. It’s meatless, and not intended to be a meat “taste-alike.” It’s just a sandwich. The combination of rice and beans makes a complete protein and the variety of ingredients as well as the seasonings gives it fabulous flavor. It’s loaded with fiber and very filling.

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Tasty Bites: Not Your Daddy's Parsnips

By Candy, RN (Steele the Day)

I loved my dad’s butter-fried parsnips growing up. They were the only vegetable I’d eat. Since I’ve strayed from using Dad-amounts of butter, I haven’t had a parsnip in 25 years. It was time.

We tend to give butter a bad rap because it contains so much saturated fat, but a little won’t hurt you and it adds a lot of flavor to foods that are naturally bland. I’d much rather indulge in a pat of real butter than something from a plastic tub full of ingredients and chemicals that I can’t pronounce.

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Tasty Bites: Vitamin C and Orange Julius

By Candy, RN (Steele the Day)

Vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant, has a wide range of benefits to health. Studies have shown it has infection-fighting properties, and it can prevent damage to body cells. People rush to get Vitamin C at the first symptoms of a cold, and it certainly can’t hurt. Vitamin C acts like an anti-histamine, and can relieve symptoms. Before antibiotics, nutritionists promoted eating foods high in Vitamin C as well as other nutrients found in fresh fruits and vegetables to fight disease. Certainly people who have a higher intake of nutrient-rich foods have a higher infection-fighting ability.

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