Great Thai-ming!

Since last night was Friday and we normally do not eat meat on Friday (a hold-over from my husband's Catholic upbringing), besides finding an international dish compatible with the South Beach diet, it had to be meatless! I decided that Thai might be good and had looked up a recipe for a shrimp Thai curry on Epicurious as well as a Thai cucumber salad (I thought it would be fun to see the difference between the Swedish cucumber salad and a Thai version!)

I headed to Trader Joe's since I had a couple of things to pick up there that only they sell,and got caught in a severe thunder storm with 40 mile an hour winds and rain so heavy you could only crawl toward your destination. It took nearly 20 minutes to drive the less than 3 miles from my office to Trader Joe's, then I had to wait for about ten minutes in the parking lot before I could even attempt to get out of the car. Walking down the aisles with the other drenched rats, I picked up English cucumbers for the salad, some diet food, and since it was still pouring outside I wandered up and down the aisles as time ticked by.

Now you know I am not much for convenience foods,usually they are filled with sugars and salt and fats to cover up the fact that they actually have not flavor. But given Trader Joe's reputation, when I saw their Green Indian curry, I thought, "Why not?"-if it was good it would save me time and since their ingredients listed lemongrass which I had almost no possibility of purveying anywhere within a 30-minute drive, I decided to give it a try.

After getting home, I made Thai green curry shrimp and Thai cucumber salad as part of our Olympic tour around the world, and I was very impressed with the trader Joe's curry sauce- it had a great melding of spices with a depth of flavor and seasoning with just the right amount of heat. And after the lengthy (and hazardous) drive, dinner was on the table in 35minutes, and most of that involved peeling the shrimp. Unfortunately for you, we are all too hungry to take a picture, so you will just have to imagine how wonderful it looked.... and tasted!

Trader Joe's Thai Shrimp Curry
1 pound shrimp, peeled
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 sweet onion cut into chunks
2/3 cup
1 tbsp peanut oil

Heat oil and toss in garlic. Cook onions until they just begin to caramelize. Stir in shrimp and toss until almost pink, then add the curry sauce and stir till shrimp is finished cooking. If you are not on a diet, this would be great over rice, but for us it was delicious as is with the cucumber salad recipe that I found on Epicurious (what else?)

Do you have a favorite Trader Joe's product that you use in your cooking when time is tight? Let me know (I might want to give it a try!)

That little something unexpected...

I have to admit that I am always intrigued when I see a recipe that has an unusual and unexpected ingredient- root beer or Dr. Pepper in barbecue sauce, mayonnaise in chocolate cake, Heidi's recipe that mated black beans and brownies, Mexican hot chocolate with chili- there's something that attracts me to these recipes. So when I saw a recipe for apple turnovers made with Mountain Dew I had to try it!

You can hardly call this a recipe since it uses prepackaged crescent roll dough (horrors!), a Granny Smith Apple or two, sugar, butter, and, of all things Mountain Dew. I was highly suspicious since I am not a big fan of tubes of crescent dough, but the hope for a delicious and easy apple turnover was enough to spur me on. I have to say, these are a great easy dessert. I had them with ice cream for dinner guests and they devoured seconds, and they were totally taken aback when I told them how they were made. So try these yourself (just what you need, another guilty pleasure, right?)

Now, it's your turn- let me hear some of your favorite recipes or dishes that have that little something unexpected. Everybody has one- now it's time to share!

Dew-Licious Apple Turnovers

2 Granny Smith apples ( I didn't peel mine, just cut in thin slices)

2 cans crescent rolls, separated

1 1/2 sticks butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoons vanilla

cinnamon

1 1/2 cups Mountain Dew

Core and slice apples. Cut apples into 8 slices each. Roll 2-3 thin slices in a crescent roll(put apples in thick side and wrap). Place in a 9 x 13 buttered pan. Melt butter, then add sugar and and vanilla, stirring, and pour over apples. Pour Mountain Dew around the edges of the pan. Sprinkle with cinnamon, cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 15-20 minutes until turnovers are golden and syrup is thick and bubbly. Serve with ice cream, and with some of the sauce from the pan over the top.

The Best Laid Plans... Camping : Day 2

Part of the fun of vacation is having choices to either do something or do nothing but relax, and that is never more true than when we go camping. And so after breakfast (which Bridget did not get up for, even after three attempts saying she didn't feel well) we were discussing our options for what to do. Molly and I were swinging in the hammock, and my husband was teasing her betting her $5 that she could not be quiet for 20 minutes. About 11 minutes into the bet (and the resulting silence), all of a sudden Molly started screaming, saying that a bee stung her in the eye. Gavin ran to the camp store to find out where the nearest doc in the box was and I grabbed some ice for Molly's eye and tried to calm her down.

Gavin ran to us and said we needed to get in the car because the clinic at the bottom of the mountain closed at noon. It was 11:30AM. Bridget, pale herself, climbed into the car and we headed down the mountain at breakneck speed. Molly had never been stung before and since I have a brother who is very allergic to bee stings, we were very concerned that she may have a reaction. Besides, we were not sure yet where, exactly she had been stung. Her eye was already swelling shut and she had what looked less like a sting and more like a scrape about an inch from her right eye.

After what seemed like an eternity, we pulled into the (very full) parking lot at the Blue Ridge Medical Center, a sight for sore eyes, literally as well as figuratively. We walked in and there were people waiting in chairs and a line at the in-house pharmacy, two phones were ringing and people came in behind us. We decided since Bridget was not feeling well and we had risked our lives, we would see if they could see her as well. Luckily for us, the fast-thinking Sue Mathes, CTF Campground owner had called ahead, but there were two sets of paperwork to fill out, and while I was pulling out insurance cards and filling out forms they were ready to take Molly so Gavin went with her and I stayed with Bridget who was frantically looking for a bathroom. After she retched on their carpet (still looking for the bathroom), they also took her back. I cannot say enough about all of the staff at BRMC. From the people at the front desk to the nurses, to the doctors who saw the girls to the pharmacist they were all about helping our daughters. Even another lady in the waiting room (a patient) helped her when she was sick! The attitude there was more like the country doctors of old than the medical mills we so often have today. With six children, I am sure you aren't surprised that I have spent my share of time in hospitals, urgent care facilities and doctor's offices, and from the beginning to the end of this experience, I was incredibly impressed with their patient-centered approach.

I wish I had the name of every person who helped us that day so I could thank them, but I have to thank Dr. Lois Alderfer who treated Molly - she gave her Benadryl right away and sent us on our way with an epi-pen and by the time I saw her Molly's eye was already looking much better and she was even cracking jokes! Bridget was seen by Dr. Stephen Willing, who diagnosed her with strep throat, and worked around her recently discovered allergy to penicillin. When we were leaving, the nurse told us that he had been in the movie Evan Almighty, which was filmed in nearby Crozet (we are definitely renting that movie!) Over an hour and a half after their normal closing time, we headed out to pickup some OTC medicine the doctors recommended and to grab some Gatorade and soup for Bridget who was still feeling very puny.

So what to do? Pack up and go home or stay and let everyone take the day to recover? We left it up to the patients, and they voted to stay (Bridget didn't think that she could take the car ride without being sick), so we pumped their medicine in them, gave them both cold drinks, and fussed over them. Bridget retired to the tent to sleep and I read in the hammock (Molly would not get back in) and played a speed card tournament with Molly and Gavin. Bridget finally emerged from the tent at about 5:30 to have some Gatorade and crackers, which I took as a good sign (especially since she had thrown up her first dose of zithromax) and we even played a game around the campfire. I did make my venison stew, but I still won't share the recipe since I was too distracted to write down ingredient amounts or preparation steps, however I will give you a tip for some great and easy dumplings that I used in the stew.

So of all the things that we had planned to do, there was some relaxation (before and after the adrenaline rush), some good food, beautiful scenery (even if some of it went by really fast!), and an experience that demonstrated to us the kindness of strangers as well as the flexibility and adaptability of our family under pressure. We had a great meal, we shared the birthday of little Jonathan at the campground whom we have known since he was a bump on his mom's belly, I finished a book, we made a reservation to stay in one of the cabins in two weeks (a miracle in itself, since October is prime leaf season, but a cancellation came in while we were there) and we even met a movie star ! All in all, still not a bad weekend in the mountains!

My "Prescription" for Easy, Delicious Dumplings

1 small box or bag of biscuit mix (Jiffy or Martha White)

1/2 cup milk2-3 ounces crumbled goat cheese with herbs

Stir together the mix and milk, until just combined. Stir in crumbled cheese until just combined. Drop by tablespoons into simmering stew and cover. Let simmer with stew for 10-15 minutes and serves. These dumplings are light and flavorful, a great compliment to any fall soup or stew.

Really convenient convenience foods

Since I wrote about a Wall Street Journal article pointing out the myth of convenience foods, I was surprised to see a post over at Food Fetish stating essentially that I might frown on her buying and using bagged salad as a time-saver, based on my recent post about convenience foods and the fact that they really don't save enough time to make them worth the extra fat and calories that they usually include. Her post made me think about what the definition of convenience foods should be and which ones I couldn't live without.

When I started looking at it, almost everything we use today is a convenience food of sorts, if you define that as a food that is already premade or pre-prepared. Are all canned foods convenience foods? I certainly use my share of canned tomatoes, canned beans, and even pasta sauce on occasion. While I love homemade bread, I don't bake for everyday use. So, if you consider processed foods as convenience foods, I don't use that many, but if you count pre-prepared foods, they are staples in my pantry and freezer, and they are the building blocks I use to play with food.

What convenience foods could you not live without? I think that you may find drawing that line a little more difficult than you imagined.