It Was A Busy Sunday

My husband and I had been procastinating of making Macaroni Salad for weeks. Few days ago, we were able to finally buy some of the ingredients that we needed for making the salad, and we planned to make it that day, but it didnt happen. Yesterday, a Sunday, we finally got the chance to be together in the kitchen and kept both our hands busy making the macaroni salad. Not only that, we decided to make Twice Bake Potato as well since we had these huge potatoes, sour and cream, and cheeze whiz that needed to be use up.

We also watched a blu-ray movie titled Catch And Release that came in the mail last Saturday. Its a very interesting storyline, i feel bad and then happy at the same time for Jennifer Garner in her role in the movie. How would someone react to a situation when the person that you love dearly passed away and then things starts to unravel and you will find out later that the person you loved was cheating on you when she/he was alive? Are you still gonna honor her/his memories together when she/he was alive? Or burry her/his memories with her/him in her/his grave and move on? Its kind of a weird movie for me.. UQ74TKGQ36CA

Strawberry Shortcake

I been making strawberry shortcake lately because our grocery and supermarkets nearby are selling a lot of fresh strawberries at this time of year. When I prepare strawberry shortcake, i used to slice them but now I prepare to dice them because its easier to eat and spread evenly in the cake.

Written and Photography by JazeVox of JazeVox.blogspot.com

Tomato Scare

This past few weeks theres been a nationwide news spread about the concern of positive results of salmonella in many tomatoes. Its been in the news that theres been dozens of people that got affected by these infected tomatoes.

As a result of these infected tomatoes, several food and dining establishment are affected by this health issues. Many recipes and food preparations have tomatoes ingredient in them like sandwhiches, pastas, tortillas, tacos, etc.

Tomatoes are such important ingredient in some recipes, not having tomatoes in them definitely wont taste as good. Although, there might be some restaurants that go through tests and got approve of having safe using tomatoes and still use tomatoes in their menus. How concern are you of eating or not eating tomatoes nowadays since the breakout of salmonella issues?

Dinner At Ruby Tuesday

We decided to try something new yesterday, so instead of going to our usual places to eat our meals, we decided to check out other restaurant nearby. We passed by Ruby Tuesday restaurant quite often on a busy street, so we decided to check out their food yesterday. As far as I can recall, we never been to their restaurant before, so we had no idea regarding their menus.

I ordered Asian Salmon and my hubby ordered hamburger with french fries. My order came with steamed brocolli, buttered toasted bread, fried rice with diced fresh tomatoes and the big chunk of salmon meat! I love to eat fish so I find everything great with what I had in my plate. I finished everything except a little leftover on the bread.

Normally, we dont go to little bit of expensive restaurants quite often because like many people nowadays, we are in a budget. Specially with how the economy is doing right now, we usually cook and prepare most of our meals at home! But it is definitely worth to experiment and try out new places youve never been before to widen our horizon and nothing get stagnant. Specially that when it comes to ordering food in our favorite restaurants, I always tend to order the same menu over and over, which is fine knowing that I will have no suprises ahead of me like I will not like the food and have it wasted, but on the other hand, I have no way of knowing what other great surprises awaits other recipes, like a totally pleasant dinner we had last night. We were definitely full and satisfied walking out of the restaurant, and it was definitely worth it.

Restaurants Name Things Differently

I cant helped but noticed that some restaurants dont always refer to the same things when it comes to food, particularly regarding noodles! At one time, in a restaurant in Washington, we ordered a chow mein and we got a bean sprouts? Another restaurant, we order chow mein, and we were served egg noodles. Then another time, one restaurant refer a chow mein to an angel haired noodle! I am definitely confused how these restaurants cannot use one term to refer to the same item. How will people know exactly which restaurants use the word chow mein to refer to an egg noodle, and which restaurants use the same word to refer to angel hair noodles, and worse case scenario to refer to a bean sprout?

In the contrary, there are several different types of animal eggs, but the most common ones are from the chicken. But when we order a scrambled egg or an over-easy egg from a restaurant, it is a good thing that it automatically means that we want a chicken egg! This definitely make sense, at least we know what we are ordering and we know what to expect once the plate is served.

But when it comes to ordering noodles, it gets really confusing how some restaurants do use different terminologies to refer to the same thing, while others use the same word to refer to different things.

Back To Italian Restaurant Again

We had a quick drive to downtown, so we decided to swing by the Italian restaurant again. As usual, i ordered the same thing, Fettucini Pesto with Shrimps, and had some warm soup and bread as first the course. We been served by two people today, a waiter took our order and bring them to us, then a waitress did all the follow-ups as far as what else we needed like additional bread and some butter requests. The soup had more veggies this time, so that was cool. But the bread was not as warm as usual, and when we ran out of bread, nobody asked if we wanted more, so we thought that they changed the rules in their restaurant, perhaps no more additional free breads, huh? But later we find out that the bread were still in the oven, as explained by the waitress, when she finally brought fresh from the oven breads! The meal was fantastic, I ended up requesting a box for my leftover again.

After we were done with the meals, we drove off to Walmart to get some groceries. On our way back to the car, while walking in the Walmart parking lot, a lady driving near where we walked slowed down in front of us and uttered our way, How Are You Guys? And we recognized her right away as the lady waitress who just served us like an hour earlier. No wonder why she left us the bill early :-) She handed us the bill of our order, the same time she handed us the food, lol. She was close to sign-off work that time, i guess, and I can understand why she left the bill early, which doesnt happen everytime we go in that restaurant, she probably just want to be able to get the tip before she leave off work, lol.

Anyways, just wanna great everyone a good night! Thanks for your visit here again.

No Milk Shake Disappointment

Just few hours ago, while in the car, probably around 7-8 pm, my hubby and I decided to take the straight route instead of turning ninety degrees towards home so that we can stop by at the nearest Jack In The Box place to buy a milkshake, nothing but a milkshake. So we drove down around 3 miles or so towards Jack In The Box to get our favorite milkshake because we presonally think that Jack In The Box milkshake is one of the best that we know, creamy and yummy! When we drove down to their drive-thru section, we noticed that all menu displays were lit and a big paper taped in one of the menu display with black pen writing that says No MILK SHAKE. Grrr, we came all the way there just to get a milkshake, and of all the menu, the one thing not available that time was their milkshake, and it was a complete pisser. So we had no choice but to back up off their drive-thru and headed towards home disappointed and pissed because we wanted the milkshake.

Sunday And Gloomy

One of my favorite day of the week is Sunday, its a weekend, no rush waking up, no rush going somewhere. But when I opened the Weather Channel this morning the forecast for our area is gonna be raining for the rest of the week, supposedly starting tommorrow Monday and up to around Thursday. But i think the rain storm is moving in early, because it looks cold and dark outside with all the rain clouds moving in already here in northern CA. There is no sign of the blue sky nor the sun, just gray sky in sight.

But on the brighter side, we are not going somewhere today, we can just relax, watch TV, or do some blogging. We have leftover spaghetti sauce from the other night, and some Round Table King Arthur Supreme Pizza from last night, so its gonna be a tasteful meal without having to go through a lot of work cooking. I just need to boil some water and cook some spaghetti noodles to go with the left-over sauce. Might have to eat the spaghetti meal first because its older compare to the pizza and i think spaghetti sauce cannot be stored very long time even when refrigerated, or its gonna spoil.

Normally, when we prepare spaghetti sauce, we take note of the cooking date to make sure that we know how long its been in the refrigerator. When its more than 4-7 days old, we usually dont use it anymore, I am not certain the shelf-life of spaghetti sauce, but sometimes its always better to be safe than sorry, having it set for so long in the refrigerator might be unhealthy, so its important that you know the date of cooking so you can decide when its too old to eat anymore.

More Places For Coffee Breaks

This morning, I was reading an article in one of the Wall Street Journal newspaper. In the frontpage, the story is talking about McDonalds company planning to add coffee bars to most if not all their McDonalds outlet here in the United States, which according to the article is around 14,000 establishments?

Yes, you read it right, McDonalds coffee bars with stuff like Latte, Cappuchino, Mocha, and all kinds of stuff, similar to what Starbucks Coffee and Java City have been offering for years. Its been months since I saw that tv show in Travel Channel, where they featured about all the unique McDonald outlets in the world. And one of the international outlet that really caught my attention in the show was the coffee shop called McCafe that been successfully operating in a place around Canada, i believe that was in Montreal Canada. I thought, that was so cool, specialized coffee at MdDonalds. Before that tv show, i never knew that there was such thing, a coffee shop or bar operated by McDonalds.

And now, the Wall Street Journal newspaper article mentioned that McDonalds is planning to open up coffee bars in most of the current McDonalds outlet! Its definitely a major competition for the big coffee giants like Starbucks. We love Starbucks coffee, as well as Java City coffees, so its gonna be quite interesting to taste the newcomer, McDonalds coffees, and decide how good they taste as well. So I cannot wait to be able to finally drop by in one of their new coffee bar, once they open up in our area.

Personally, I think, with McDonalds new coffee bars coming up here in the USA, its gonna be cool, more choices for the consumers, and hopefully, competitions will cause some prices of coffees lowered down a little bit and becomes more affordable for more people! So its a good thing in a way, specially in the side of the consumers. What about you, what do you think of having more coffee shops around, where you can have more choices as to where to buy your latte or cappuccino or mocha?

Different Ways To Cook Chicken Eggs

I grow up not going to restaurant a lot. I learned most of my cooking from watching my mother and my grandmother. For most household, like ours, chicken egg is a basic ingredient that you often, if not always find in the kitchen refrigerator. Aside from having fried egg and boiled egg for breakfast, i used egg for baking. But lately, I been learning more new ways and technique to cook and serve eggs, old and new ways, which some of you maybe familiar or have heard of before:

Boiled Egg. Usually you just place bunch of whole egg still in their shell in a pan. Add water and boil the eggs for around 5 to 10 minutes enough to achieve either a Soft Boiled or Hard Boiled. Soft boiled means the egg white is cooked but the yellow yolk is still a little runny. While Hard bolied means both eggwhite and egg yolk are hard enough that its not runny.

Scrambled Egg. To prepare, just crack egg egg and put both eggwhite and eggyolk together in a bowl. Sprinkle some salt to taste, add minimal amount of milk and then lightly whip the whole mixture, enough to mix all ingredients thoroughly. Then add the mixture in a pre-heated greased pan and then cooked the egg until fluffy, stir the egg mixture while cooking to achieve the scrambled idea.

Fried Egg. Follow the same steps are Scrambled Egg (see above), but instead of stirring the egg while cooking, let one side cook, and then use a wide spatula to flip the whole egg, maintaining the shape of the egg mixture. If the fan is big, usually you will ended up with bigger size, you can fold the egg half-way to in three-folds, and let it fry until all the runny mixture is gone.

Sunny-Side Up. Simply pre-heat a greased pan in a medium heat and crack the egg and then put the whole contents in the pan, make sure that the egg yolk will stay intact and unbroken to achieve the right visual look of sunny-side up. Cook the egg until the egg white hardens and partly the egg yolk as well, then its ready to serve.

Over-Easy. Follow the same steps for cooking the Sunny-Side Up (see above), but once the first side is cooked, you flipped the whole egg using a spatula and let the other side cooked for about one to two seconds and serve. Over-easy usually still has the egg yolk a little bit runny.

Over-hard. Follow the same steps for cooking the Over-Easy one, but when you flipped the egg, let the other side cooked a little bit longer so that the egg yolk will thoroughly cooked and not runny.

Omelet. There are several types of omelet, you have several options as far as fillings that you can add for your omelet recipe, but I just want to focus more on how its cooked, rather than the ingredients. For a simple omelet, follow the same steps as Fried Egg, but placing the egg to the frying pan, add extra ingredient to the egg mixture like diced tomatoes, tidbits of bacons, tidbits of hams or sauges, and then mix it with the egg. Then cooked the same way as either Fried egg or Scrambled egg, see above for both.

Devilled Egg. Cooked whole eggs, exactly the same way as Boiled Egg, make sure that you boil the egg around 10-13 minutes to make sure that you achieve the hard-boiled egg effect. Once boiled, carefully peel the shell of each eggs, this can be very hot so make sure that you have cold water handy to help you with the peeling part, and cool down the egg a little bit. Cut the peeled egg legnthwise and carefully scoped the egg yolks and place them a bowl. Add taste of mustard, pickles, and mayonaise in the egg yolk and mix well. Fill back the hollowed egg white using the egg yolk mixture, chill and serve!

Written by JAZEVOX. All Rights Reserved.