Chocolate Covered Pretzles

Last but not least...it's Paula's cookbook, Paula Deen's Cookbook for the Lunchbox the Set. Paula got some heat for this book by a few who claimed she was contributing to the problem of childhood obesity by publishing a book with a lot of high fat foods. Paula defended herself by saying that the book did have many healthy recipes also. She then pointed out that this is not an everyday cookbook, instead it's chapters are broken up into special event categories (such as "bake sale" and "family picnic")and is meant to inspire kids to make these recipes with their families.

I personally thought it was a little ridiculous that she was being attacked for not writing a more health conscience book. Hello?...This is Paula Deen....queen of southern style cooking and BUTTER. What did people really expect? Besides, the reason why I (and many others)love Paula has more to do with her personality than it does with her cooking. I enjoy her jolly disposition (she reminds me Santa), her kooky personality and her love of family. Her family is always front and center in her shows. She might not be promoting healthy eating but she is promoting the importance of family time and I appreciate that.

As for the cookbook itself, it's laid out nicely and the list of ingredients get a full page with coordinating pictures. This was great for my son, who is a beginner reader (level one books)because he was able to figure out what ingredients we needed without my help. I let him pick out the recipe and he chose these chocolate covered pretzels. No shocker here, these were yummy and had a lot of hands on steps for my son.

Fun and educational recipe. My son counting out the pretzel rods.

Adding the sprinkles.


Ingredients
1 12-ounce package milk chocolate chips
1 12-ounce package white chocolate chips
24 large pretzel rods (we used smaller honey wheat pretzel rods)
Assorted sprinkles

Directions
Place the milk chocolate chips in a microwave-safe bowl and the white chocolate chips in another. Microwave one bowl on high for 1 minute. Remove and stir with a rubber spatula. (The chips should melt while you are stirring, but if they don't, you can continue to microwave for 15 more seconds, then stir again.) Wash and dry the spatula. Microwave the other bowl on high for 1 minute, and stir until the chocolate is melted.

Dip one pretzel rod into the milk chocolate; use a spoon or butter knife to spread the chocolate about halfway up the rod. Twist the rod to let the excess chocolate drip off. Hold the rod over a piece of wax paper and shake sprinkles on all sides. Place the pretzel on another piece of wax paper to dry. Coat another pretzel with white chocolate and sprinkles. Repeat until you've coated all the pretzels, half with milk chocolate, half with white chocolate, and let dry completely, about 12 hours. (Cover any remaining chocolate with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator.)

Cantaloupe, Red Onion and Walnut Salad

This delicious salad comes from Giada de Laurentiis' cookbook, Giada's Kitchen. I loved the combination of the fresh citursy dressing, crunchy walnuts and sweet melon. I made it for lunch last week and it was a nice change of pace from my regular lettuce,tomato, cucumber with vinaigrette salad.

As for the rest of the cookbook, I really wanted to love it. Flipping through it, there are so many wonderful looking recipes. Plus, many are lighter in fat than her regular fare which I appreciated. However, I had really mixed results with two other recipes I tried (orzo stuffed peppers & pasta with mini meatballs). They weren't bad just kind of bland. I'm not giving up on this cookbook though. The salad was great and I'm sure there are other gems in there.

Ingredients:
Orange Vinaigrette
1/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 Tbsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 Tbsp raspberry vinegar
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Salad
1 (3lb) cantaloupe, cut into cubes
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
2 cups arugula (I used herb mix salad)
1 cup chopped walnuts, toasted

To make the vinaigrette, combine the orange juice, lemon juice and raspberry vinegar in a small bowl. Slowly add the oil and whisk till smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To make the salad, combine the rest of the ingredients and pour vinaigrette on top. Gently toss to combine.

Spicy Beef and New Orleans Red Rice Skillet Dinner

This recipe comes from the Deen Brother's cookbook, The Deen Bros.-take it easy. This dish was pretty good but didn't love it. However, BOTH my kids ate this up and I thought it tasted much better as leftovers the next day.

The cookbook, is a collection of "quick and affordable meals the whole family will love", but I was disappointed that for a family cookbook there were a lot of recipes high in fat, salt, and with too much spice. Also, some of the recipes were a bit unimaginative. For example, they have a quesadilla recipe that calls for you to put shredded cheese in a flour tortilla and the cook it in a skillet...hmmm, I don't know. I just expected a little bit more. I don't have any of their other cookbooks but I'm guessing those are better.

Ingredients
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 pound ground beef
2 1/4 tsp salt (I only used 1 3/4 tsp)
2 celery ribs, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
2 cups chicken broth
1 14oz can tomato puree
1 1/2 cups uncooked long-grain rice
1 tsp sugar
2 teaspoons Tabasco, or other hot sauce (I only used 1)

Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. Crumble the beef into the skillet and season with 1/2 tsp of salt. Brown the beef, breaking it up with a fork for 5-7 minutes, until it is no longer pink. Transfer to paper towel lined plate to drain.

Reduce the heat from high to medium and reduce all of the drippings but 2 tablespoons. Saute the celery, onion and bell pepper for 5 minutes or until tender. Add the browned beef, chicken broth, 1 1/2 cups of water, tomato puree, rice, sugar, the remaining salt and Tabasco. Bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to med-low and cook covered for 40 minutes or until the rice is tender.

Cookbooks!

Since my celeb chef stalking sessions, I have not opened one of the cookbooks that I purchased and had signed. Truth be told, I was more interested in meeting Paula, Alton, Giada and the Deen brothers than I was in their latest cookbook. However, I do now have 4 new cookbooks and my plan for this week is to try one recipe from each book. So check back to see what I cook up this week!

Giada de Laurentiis Book Signing

This past Saturday, I got to meet Giada de Laurentiis at the Metro Cooking and Entertaining show in Washington DC at the Convention Center.

My husband and both kids were supposed to join me but my husband decided to go home at the last moment with my daughter because she was getting cranky and really needed a nap. It was a good thing too because this was definitely a grown up event. They had advertised a kid's area but it was really lame and I found myself soon wishing my son had gone home too.

He did do OK for most of it. He walked around, sampled a bunch of food and enjoyed a ridiculously expensive smoothie. After about an hour and a half of this we needed something else to do. So, I decided to get our book signing wristbands and wait for Giada. Amazingly, he occupied himself with a small book for the next 45 minutes. Then, Giada showed up and we only had a short (10-15 min) wait for our turn to meet her. However, by this time, my son had had it! He was tired of waiting and bored. He started really acting up....I was so close but now had an impeding melt down on my hands...damn!

When it was our turn, amazingly my son did a complete 360. He ran right up and started shouting "Giada! Giada!"...it was pretty funny and everyone in the room, Giada included, started laughing. She chatted with him a bit and as we were leaving my son turns to her and says "ciao bella!" (he learned that from our sitter who knows some Italian)...Giada quickly said "ciao bello" back. It was such a great little moment and for that reason alone, I was happy my son stayed with me for the show.

Here are some more pictures from our day.

Isn't she lovely...

Chatting it up with Giada.

Not the most flattering picture of us but we were all laughing at my son.

A view of the DC Convention Center. This was taken at 4:30PM and it had cleared out quite a bit.Earlier in the day it was packed!!
So, I think that is the end of my celebrity chef stalking opportunities for the time being. However, I would love to meet Ina and Emeril some day. How about you? What celeb chef would you like to meet?

Jaime and Bobby Deen Book Signing

Here is my latest installment of celebrity chef stalking...Jaime and Bobby Deen (a.k.a Paula Deen's sons).

The little boy in the brown shirt will look familiar to some of you. He is Jack Deen, Jaime's son. He is in several of Paula's cooking magazines and cookbooks. He is also on the cover of the current issue of Good Housekeeping magazine with Paula.


The other little boy, is of course, my son. He seems to enjoy celebrity chef stalking as much as I do :)

Watch out Giada...I'm coming for you next!

Alton Brown Book Signing

So today, I got to meet Alton Brown at a local book signing. This came about very last minute though and I'm still surprised that I actually pulled it off.

This morning, after dropping my son off at preschool, I rushed home to meet the plumber. Our garbage disposal was broken and had clogged up the kitchen sink as well. Anyway, as the plumber worked on our broken disposal, I decide to log onto Facebook. That's when I saw that a friend had posted a status update that he was on his way to Sur La Table in Arlington to see Alton. Alton Brown has a new cookbook/coffee table book called Good Eats: The Early Years.

I love Alton and really wanted to see him but it was already 10:35am and the event started at 11:30am. Plus, I still had the plumber here, I was in my workout clothes and hadn't showered yet, my daughter needed a snack and I had to pick up my son by 12:15 and drop him off by 12:25 at his afternoon preschool....how the heck was I going to get myself to Arlington to meet Alton???!!!!

Well, luckily the plumber finished up quickly and I threw my daughter and myself in the car as fast as I could. I drove us to the gym so I could take a shower while she played in the nursery. After that, I made a quick stop at a local coffee shop and we both ate a much needed snack. Then, I picked my son up from AM preschool and dropped him off at PM preschool. After that, I hopped on the highway and made it to Arlington (a 20 min. trip from my area of Alexandria)in record time. We got to the book signing just before 1pm.

Lucky for me, they had extended the book signing time a little longer. So, I purchased my book and waited about 45 minutes in line to meet Alton Brown. It was so worth it too! I only got to speak with him briefly, while he signed my book but he was so,so nice. And it was such a treat to meet him in person. His show on the Foodnetwork is one of my favorites. I just love his nerdy science teacher like personality.

Next month, Giada! Yep....I'm a crazy, celebrity chef stalker :)

Meeting Alton...he was so nice!

Alton signs our book.

My daughter, so happy to be out of her stroller.

My daughter and I with our copy of "Good Eats".

Paula Deen Book Signing

Today I got to meet Paula Deen!! I found out a couple of weeks ago that she was going to be in my area doing a book signing for her new kids cookbook, Paula Deen's Cookbook for the Lunchbox Set. My son and I are both huge fans and we're so excited that we got the chance to meet her.

Paula was at a Wegman's grocery store here in northern VA and signed books for about 500 people in just 2 hours. They rushed everybody through b/c of the time constraint so there was no opportunity for posed pictures. However, my son did get to chat with her a bit (I think I just said "hi"). He told her that he loved her red velvet cupcakes (we had made them several weeks ago). She got such a kick out of this and turned to Michael (her husband) to tell him what my son had said. Paula then told my little guy that he should try her whoppie pie recipe.

It was great! Paula was just like she is on TV. Lots of fun and full of charm. It made our 4.5 hour trip at Wegman's totally worth it.


Me and my son. We were both so excited to meet Paula.

Meeting Paula

Paula listening to my son. He was telling her that he loves her red velvet cupcake recipe.

Paula telling him to try her whoppie pie recipe.

We ran into Michael after the signing.

He stopped to chat with my son.

They shook hands and did a high five.