Tag: product reviews

Mary, Recipes, Products

purple sweet potato pie

Purple sweet potatoes. I’ve never seen these in the store before or really even knew of their existence until I got a bag full of them from Frieda’s Produce. With Thanksgiving on my horizon, I figured I’d try a twist on the classic sweet potato pie – replacing the normally orange colored sweet potatoes for the vibrant purple variety instead. Take my hand and let’s go on a pie-making journey!

You can see a hint of their purple color in the skins alone, but the purple color becomes a bit more pronounced once you cut and peel the sweet potatoes. It seems to be almost jewel-toned in color. These were treated the same as any other potato – wash, peel, and cover with water and set to boil.

I felt like I was a witch with a cauldron full a of bubbling boiling potion after seeing my pot of water turn purple! The whole sweet potatoes simmer and boil away for about 45 minutes, until the potatoes are soft and you can easily stick a fork through them.

Drain the freakishly festive purple water to reveal your bright purple sweet potatoes. Mash them with a masher, fork, or other implement of your choice until the sweet potatoes are nice and smooth. You’ll still see a few strings sticking up, but it should smooth out further as you weave the mixture into a magical pie filling.

Add the beautiful things – like butter, sugar, milk, vanilla and spices – to your sweet potatoes in the mixer and churn away. Let it whirl and be amazed by the color yet again.

In a partially baked pie crust, pour in your Barney-like filling and bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until the edges are a golden brown. There seems to be a lot of cooking time going around here for this one, but you’ll love the end result!

Eat a slice and hope that you don’t start singing Barney songs. Share with family and friends as they ooh and ahh over the color then pat yourself on the back for such a brilliant idea. Continue reading “purple sweet potato pie”

Products, Mary, Recipes

white bean and sweet chili coconut shrimp pizza

I’m a bit proud of this one, my second post for the WorldFoods challenge. And I got this idea from thinking about beans.

Beans are not usually something I ever think about. I tend to shun beans, not really enjoying their flavor or consistency. But I did have a bean dish this summer that I really enjoyed at Isola Pizza Bar – it was made with cannellini beans and had a great punch of garlic and rosemary and served as a dip. I started thinking… what if I put that dip on a pizza?

And then what if I added shrimp to it?

This led me to make this White Bean and Sweet Chili Coconut Shrimp Pizza.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

This is about all you need – and some onion, which I forgot to include in the photo. Silly.

The first thing you need to do is crank your oven to 500 degrees. Put your pizza pan in there, too. Trust me.

The next thing to do is prep the shrimp – clean and devein those suckers and then use this Sweet Chili Coconut sauce to marinate the shrimp.

Then just set it aside while you prep the rest of your food! You should also take out your pizza dough to let it rest and come up to room temperature while you are making the bean sauce.

These creamy looking beans need a drain after the lid is popped off, but save that “bean juice”! We’re going to need it again while making the bean sauce.

Chop up about half an onion and five cloves of garlic. It seems like a lot of garlic but I think it gives the bean sauce a great, simple flavor.

Cook the onions in olive oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper until soft and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, until fragrant.

Add your beans and a few tablespoons of the reserved bean liquid. Add another dash of salt and pepper and cook until heated through.

Put the whole thing into your blender with the rest of the reserved bean liquid and a few good tablespoons of olive oil.

Whirl this mixture around until perfectly smooth. Be sure to taste it and season to your liking! It might need a little more salt & pepper love, if your tongue tells you so.

Smooth, creamy, bean stuff!

Time to prep the pizza dough!

Sprinkle a little bit of flour on the dough and then you need to stretch and roll it out.

I like to let gravity do all of the work for me. I start to twist the dough around in the air to stretch it out. I don’t do that tossing thing – I’m afraid of dropping the whole thing on the floor. I work quickly enough to get the dough out to a good size – though not quite round… but that’s okay!

Once the dough is a good size and the oven’s ready, pull the pizza pan out of the oven and carefully place the dough on top. Once it’s on there it will not move until cooked through, so be mindful!

The heat from the pan will sear the bottom of the crust and start cooking it right away, helping you to create a nice, crispy bottom.

After the dough goes down, I always put olive oil, salt and pepper on the bottom. I’m a firm believer in seasoning every layer!

The dough is ready for that beautiful white bean sauce to be spooned on top of the crust.

Plop your shrimp across your misshaped pizza and then pop it back into your hot oven. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

Yummy pizza goodness is now at your fingertips! Even if it’s not a traditional round shape. That just makes it more “rustic”.

For a little “oomph”, add prosciutto and chopped cilantro to your pizza after it comes out of the oven. Totally optional, but also another little layer of flavor for your slices.

Recipes, Products, Mary

stir fry with pineapple lemon grass sauce and coconut rice

This post contains: a product review, an easy peasy recipe, and asking for a little bit of help from you!

I recently joined up with a team of 5 bloggers from California to compete in a little contest vs. other bloggers representing their own states. Our goal? To showcase our recipes and reviews of sauces from WorldFoods! We were each given a hamper full of various stir fry sauces, pastes and dipping sauces to use in whatever way we’d like. The nice thing about all of these sauces is that they’re good for a wide variety of diets since they have no artificial preservatives, no gluten, no trans fat and no dairy in their products and are suitable for vegetarians, vegans and those with allergy restrictions.

Team California’s overall goal is to get the word out and obtain the most amount of feedback across all of our social networks! If you enjoy my post, please like this post on Facebook or share it on Twitter or pin a photo to Pinterest!

Okay, spiel over. Onto the food!

Out of the eight sauces I received, I decided to start with something easy: a little stir fry with WorldFoods Cambodian Pineapple Lemon Grass sauce. One of the neat things about this sauce? I can pronounce all of the items in the ingredients list! That’s always nice.

To make things interesting, I paired this with some freshly made coconut rice.

I don’t know about you, but I find plain old rice to be incredibly boring. Maybe it was my years of childhood being made to eat rice I didn’t really enjoy, but plain rice isn’t something I ever crave. But add a little flavor and seasoning to it – chicken stock, herbs, lemon – then I’m totally game. I created a simple coconut rice to pair with dinner – all I added to my pot of calrose rice was a big can of coconut water, a pinch of salt and a pinch of white sugar.

The coconut rice I started first since it takes about 20 minutes to do. The calrose rice is my preferred go-to rice as well – but this will work with a different type, too. The pinch of sugar adds another slight bit of sweetness – nothing to outrageous – but gives it a nice little touch that I really enjoy. Fluffy, sticky, and slightly sweet – mmm.

It’s not a really strong coconut flavor, either. It’s mild, a little nutty, and a little sweet. A nice base for a stir fry, if you ask me.

For the stir-fry, I really kept things simple. For my first review of one of their sauces, I really wanted to keep things simple and see how it would stand up mostly on it’s own.

I kept the veggies simple with some sliced up onions, mushrooms and snow peas.

Fact: I love snow peas. I hate frozen green peas. I have no idea what’s wrong with me.

For the meaty portion of this dinner, I sliced up a leftover New York steak that Jake had brought over and 1 piece of pork that had been marinating for a BBQ later in the week (I stole it for my dish!). I stuck the steak in the freezer for a few minutes while I prepped everything else, so it would be oh-so-slightly easier to cut into thin slices.

Annnnnd – that was it for the prep work! Onto to the wok!

Let the stir-frying begin!

After heating my wok to HOLYHELLTHATISHOT temperatures, I added the onions and cooked those for about a minute. Then I tossed in the mushrooms and sprinkled in salt and pepper. Another minute. Then I added the snow peas – another little dash of salt and pepper – I believe in seasoning every layer!
Continue reading “stir fry with pineapple lemon grass sauce and coconut rice”

Mary, Recipes, Products

banana cream pie with caramelized walnuts and grow bananas

I have a weird aversion to bananas. I think their texture is kind of weird. But I like them when they’re in stuff, so I’m not opposed to things like banana bread, or banana muffins or things like that. When I was contacted recently by a rep who offered me bananas, I thought, “Huh? Really? Bananas?”

I accepted the offer though and was able to learn more about the company behind Organics Unlimited and their program called GROW (Giving Resources and Opportunities to Workers). GROW helps fund programs for farm workers and their families in the areas where Organics Unlimited bananas are grown (in Mexico and Ecuador). These programs include scholarships, study groups, dental programs and vision exams. A portion of each purchased GROW box is donated to the GROW fund to help support these programs to bring educational and health care programs to these underdeveloped banana growing regions.

The bananas I received were from this GROW box – you can tell by the sticker placed on the bananas! GROW bananas are available at Jimbo’s Naturally stores and can sometimes be found in Sprouts, Ralphs, and OB People’s Food Store.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with the bananas. So many ideas ran through my head; I got suggestions on Twitter and Facebook. Bread? Cookies? Pie? What?

I decided on making a pie. A banana cream pie. With caramelized walnuts.

Want a make a pie, too? Follow my instructions below.

Take photos of bananas in the yard.

Hope no one else is watching you take photos of bananas in the yard.

Proceed to bake a pie shell without properly tucking it into the pan.

Lament about how ugly your pie is going to look.

Sigh dramatically. Notice that no one else is around to hear you sigh dramatically. Repeat.

Make delicious vanilla custard stuff from scratch and feel slightly better about the ugly pie crust.

Slice the bananas. Think to yourself, “Organic bananas look just like regular bananas!” Laugh at self.

Decide to cut the bananas on a bias. Decide you should use the word “bias” more often.

Continue reading “banana cream pie with caramelized walnuts and grow bananas”

Mary, Products

dinner on the grill / grilled zucchini, kielbasa and the little potato company

I recently got another product to review: baby potatoes from The Little Potato Company! I love potatoes and these little baby ones were so cute that I was pretty excited to get a batch of them to try out.

I was given a bag of the “Terrific Trio” and the “Baby Boomer” potatoes for sampling. Featured here in my recipes are the Baby Boomer potatoes.

How cute are these little baby potatoes?! I could just eat them right up… oh wait. I am! (Bad joke, I know.)

The baby potatoes don’t need to be peeled and don’t really even need to be chopped up. They’re the perfect size for cooking “as is” – whether you decide to roast, boil, smash, grill or bake.

I was feeling kind of lazy that day… so after a quick rinse, I threw this babies into a pot of salted water and set them to boil for some lightly smashed potatoes.

Along with the potatoes I cut up some zucchini from my dad’s garden – we were overflowing in the zucchini this summer and I decided to grill these up. A quick drizzle of olive oil and a dusting of salt and pepper and these veggies were ready for the grill.

Continue reading “dinner on the grill / grilled zucchini, kielbasa and the little potato company”