I’m going to start with the basics; shopping for your ingredients. This doesn’t need to be an arduous task. It’s easy, fun, and at the very least, it’s less expensive than eating out.
I find the roughest thing for beginners to shop for is produce, even though it is usually (in my opinion) one of the most important parts of the meal. It can serve as anything from a garnish, to a side, to the main dish. Moral of the story, fruit and veggies are important so you need to get over your fear of them.

Here are some tips for picking out your roughage:
• You can sense the quality of produce, don’t worry about looking silly, you can go ahead and sniff the navel of fruit, or the end of vegetables where the open.
• Look to see if it’s a bright color. That’s usually nature’s sign that something is okay to eat. So if it’s dull, or bruised you probably won’t want it.
• Pinch vegetable like pea pods lightly, you want to feel their texture, but you have not bought them so you don’t have the right to damage them.
Other than that, you need to use your most important sense of all, common sense. If something’s skin or peel is torn, don’t buy it. If it smells bad, don’t buy it. If you have doubts about it, ask someone, and if you don’t think they know what they’re talking about, move on to the next item on your shopping list, and look elsewhere for the needed item.

Awesome! So now that we can pick our own produce out, here is a quick and easy recipe made out of our fresh ingredients:

15 min 15 min prep
romaine lettuce

1 avocado

3 green onions

9 cherry tomatoes

1 Italian salad mix (Dole makes a good one.)

1. Wash and dry lettuce and tear into bite size pieces.
2. Slice the avocado, green onions and tomatoes.
3. Place all ingredients in a large salad bowl and add contents of Italian Salad Kit.
4. Toss thoroughly.
5. Serve immediately.
Sound too easy? Well, settle down tiger. The recipes will only get more exciting, and more advanced as we go along.

Peace.
Brittany.

I did get to go to Appleby’s yesterday and try their 3 course meal which starts at $9.99.  I had the Mozzarella Cheese Sticks, Mozzarella and Chicken Alfredo over Penne and Key Lime Pie for dessert with a Mojito.  All together it was pretty standard fair for a chain restaurant like Appleby’s but I loved their Key Lime Pie, it was not too sweet and maintained the perfect level of tartness, even the portion was perfect.  If you didn’t know Appleby’s does dessert shooters which are served in large shot glasses.

I love cheese, I really do. I suppose this is would be obvious if you could look in my fridge, I always have at least 3 kinds of cheese and I consider them to be staples on my shopping list. I also usually have a variety of special cheeses. One of the things I love about cheese is that it’s not that hard to try different kinds, especially here in Bakersfield. Just about any grocery now stocks a half dozen kinds of Mexican cheese from Oaxaca to Panela.

In the past year I have tried Oaxaca, Panela, Gouda, Fontina, Bleu, Feta, Brie, Camembert, and Edam. I haven’t enjoyed all of them but it has been an experience for the better.

Happy Cheese Tasting!

You will need foil, medium to large potatoes, chives, bacon bits, sour cream, and cheese (yellow American or cheddar works great). The first thing you need to do is wash the potatoes, wrap them in foil and then bake at 400F (approx. 205C) till they are easy to poke with a fork.

Let them cool; burning yourself is not a good idea. Once they have cooled scoop out the insides of the potatoes leaving the skin intact except for an oval at the top. Now take the potato insides and combine it with:

sour cream (2 ounces/60 ml for every medium sized potato)

cheese (1 oz./30mL per medium potato)

bacon bits (1/2 oz./15 g per medium potato)

chives (1/2 oz./15 g per medium potato)

melted butter (1 tbs/15 ml per medium potato)

After these are combined, spoon the mixture back into the potato skins and bake until the cheese is melted and a slight crust has formed on top. Remove and serve.

Yummy.