Thursday, June 30, 2011

July 4th

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

July 4th is a great time to spend with your love ones. If you head out to the park, lake or decide to stay in the house out of the heat, plan a great meat. Great time to spend quality time with your love ones.

I've taken some of my recipes. Choose one or more from the list and come up with your own menu. What are you going to choose?


Note, Christine's Pantry is participating in Your Best Recipe Roundup at http://spiciefoodie.blogspot.com. Each participant has to chose and share their best recipe of the month. For June, I chose my http://christinespantry.blogspot.com/2011/06/mayo-chocolate-cake.html. Stop by and check out all the wonderful recipes listed in June's YBR Roundup, http://spiciefoodie.blogspot.com/2011/06/your-best-recipes-of-june-junes-ybr.html.

Enjoy!





Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Fried Pork Chops

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

The pig dates back 40 million years to fossils which indicate that wild pig-like animals roamed forests and swamps in Europe and Asia. By 4900 B.C. pigs were domesticated in China, and were being raised in Europe by 1500 B.C. On the insistence of Queen Isabella, Christopher 
Columbus took eight pigs on his voyage to Cuba in 1493. But it is Hernando de Soto who could be dubbed "the father of the American pork industry." He landed with America's first 13 pigs at Tampa Bay, Florida in 1539. Native Americans reportedly became very fond of the taste of pork, resulting in some of the worst attacks on the de Soto expedition. 

By the time of de Soto's death three years later, his pig herd had grown to 700 head, not including the ones his troops had consumed, those that ran away and became wild pigs (and the ancestors of today’s feral pigs or razorbacks), and those given to the Native Americans to keep the peace. The pork industry in America had begun. Pig production spread throughout the new colonies. Hernando Cortez introduced hogs to New Mexico in 1600, and Sir Walter Raleigh brought sows to Jamestown Colony in 1607. Semi-wild pigs conducted such rampages in New York colonists' grain fields that every owned pig 14 inches high had to have a ring in its nose. On Manhattan Island, a long solid wall was constructed on the northern edge of the colony to control roaming herds of pigs. This area is now known as Wall Street. The pig population of Pennsylvania colony numbered in the thousands by 1660. 

As the seventeenth century closed, the typical farmer owned four or five pigs, supplying salt pork and bacon for his table with surpluses sold as barreled pork. Finishing pigs on Native Americans corn became popular after becoming a common practice in Pennsylvania. After the Revolutionary war, pioneers began heading west and they took their indispensable pigs with them. A wooden crate filled with young pigs was often hung from the axles of prairie schooners. As western herds grew, the need for pork processing facilities became apparent. Packing plants began to spring up in major cities. Pigs were first commercially slaughtered in Cincinnati, which became known as Porkopolis. More pork was packed there than any other place in the mid-west.
By http://www.porkbeinspired.com/About_TheHistoryOfPork.aspx

Fried Pork Chops
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
4 boneless pork chops
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup flour
seasoned salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
vegetable oil, for frying

Directions:
Pour oil in deep skillet, heat to 350 degrees. Season each pork chop, both sides with seasoned salt. In a dish, add eggs. In a separate dish, add flour, pepper, garlic powder and onion powder, mix well. Dip each pork chop in egg, then dip into flour, coat well. Carefully, add pork chops to hot oil. Cook in batches. Fry about 8 minutes, until brown and no longer pink in center. Turn pork chops once. Place pork chops on paper towel lined dish to drain. Serve warm. Enjoy!

Monday, June 27, 2011

Skillet Green Beans

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

The green bean originates in Central and South America. The green bean was domesticated in ancient times, but researchers can’t say exactly where, although seeds of cultivated forms were found in deposits from Callejon de Huaylas, Peru with a radiocarbon dating of 7680 B.P. and from 7000 B.P. in Tehuacán, Mexico, although atomic mass spectrometry dating contests this dates by measuring the age as only 2, 285 ± 60 B.P.

The green bean was introduced to the Mediterranean upon the return of Columbus from his second voyage to the New World in 1493. In Columbus's diary from November 4, 1492 he describes lands in Cuba planted with faxones and fabas "different than ours." Later he encounterd fexoes and habas that were different than the ones he knew from Spain. Faxones was probably the cowpea and fabas and habas was the fava bean. The beans Columbus found were undoubtedly what is now designated Phaseolus vulgaris .

The earliest depiction of a New World bean in Europe is thought to be the woodcut in the herbal published by Leonhart Fuchs in 1543. The bean spread into the eastern Mediterranean and by the seventeenth century was cultivated everywhere in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. In a 1988 study of the phaseolin structure of the common bean researchers traced the beans now grown in the western Mediterranean as ones originating in the Andes.

The phaselus and phaseolus beans mentioned in the Roman authors Virgil and Columella are now believed to be another leguminous plant in the genus Dolichus , that is, the hyacinth bean. Phaseolus is a New World plant and all the so-called phaseolus from the Old World have been re-classified as vigna .

There are four major cultivated species: P. vulgaris , P. coccineus (scarlet runner bean), P. lunatus (lima or sieva bean), P. acutifolius var. latifolius (tepary bean). A fifth species, P. polyanthus , is cultivated in the New World, but it is not found in Mediterranean cultivation. 

There are today many cultivars of green beans, more than 500, with variations in pod, texture, or seed color, for example the yellow wax beans.

Seed saver exchange, an international network of seed collections based in Iowa, has over 4,000 varieties of beans in their collection and still counting. The best known dry or horticultural beans, such as kidney beans, pinto beans, black beans, and navy beans, are members of this species. So too are most of the familiar bean varieties such as great northern, flageolet, haricots vert, cannellini , borlotti , Jacob's Cattle, Kentucky wonder, Blue Lake, and all the rest.

Horticultural beans are a class of beans grown specifically to be shelled when their seeds are mature. These varieties of horticultural beans usually have maroon-streaked pods and their seeds are two colored. Commercially, beans are either shell beans or pod beans. The pod beans are sold and eaten while still unripe and are called string beans, green beans, snap beans, or pole beans. String beans have over the years been cultivated so that they will be “stringless,” that is, so they do not have the fibrous inedible string along the pod seam. Shell beans are either low bushy plants that don’t need support or climbing (pole) beans which do require support.
By http://www.cliffordawright.com/caw/food/entries/display.php/topic_id/6/id/5/

Skillet Green Beans
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 box of frozen green beans, thawed
4 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
pinch crush red pepper

Directions:
Melt butter in a nonstick skillet. Add crushed red pepper. Then add green beans, salt, pepper and garlic powder.Stir well. Heat through, about 8 minutes. Enjoy!



Thursday, June 23, 2011

Little C's Pasta Helper

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

The marketing history of Worcestershire sauce is well-documented. In 1837 the English firm Lea & Perrins began selling the exciting, newly-developed product commercially at their pharmacy/grocery store. They also sent representatives to the docks of English ports in order to convince the stewards of passenger ships to take cases of the condiment on board liners so that bottles of the product could be set on the dining room tables. The tangy, pungent, meaty-flavored sauce caught on, and soon Lea & Perrins opened more retail shops in several English towns. Along with other products, they sold their sauce at these new locations. Worcestershire sauce was also exported to other countries around the world.

Now the sauce is produced in the United States, as well as in England, and other brands of Worcestershire sauce besides Lea & Perrins have appeared.

The story of the origins of the recipe for Worcestershire sauce is entangled in a web of legends, but the common thread is that its place of origin was India. Versions of how the recipe came to England usually credit a member or members of the prominent Sandy and/or Grey families. Typically the stories indicate an effort to reproduce a Bengali recipe for a sauce or a curry powder, and the assistance of apothecaries/chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins of Worcester. In most editions of the tale, the first attempt is a failure, but the results are stored away; fermentation occurs and a later tasting reveals the delightful concoction now enjoyed the world over.


The exact recipe is secret, but it is known to include both common and exotic ingredients: anchovies, shallots, chilies, cloves, tamarinds (brown pods from a tropical tree), garlic, sugar, molasses, vinegar, and salt. Attempts to produce the sauce at home are sometimes made, as this 1890 recipe shows:

Imitation Worcestershire Sauce

  • 3 teaspoonfuls cayenne pepper.
  • 2 tablespoonfuls walnut or tomato catsup (strained through muslin).
  • 3 shallots minced fine.
  • 3 anchovies chopped into bits.
  • 1 quart of vinegar.
  • Half-teaspoonful powdered cloves.
Mix and rub through a sieve. Put in a stone jar, set in a pot of boiling water, and heat until the liquid is so hot you can not bear your finger in it. Strain, and let it stand in the jar, closely covered, two days, then bottle for use.
The versatile sauce, homemade or commercial, is used on broiled meats (especially steaks), in Bloody Marys, in stews, in recipes for Welsh rabbit, even in some blue cheese dressing recipes.

In 1981 the U. S. Department of the Army spent $6000 to prepare a 17-page manual on how to buy Worcestershire sauce. It really isn't that hard. Go buy some and add its mysterious piquancy to your foods.
By Patricia B. Mitchell - http://www.foodhistory.com/foodnotes/leftovers/sauce/worcestershire/01

A Lea & Perrins advertisement, CA. 1920.
A 1902 advertisement for Holbrook's Worcestershire Sauce, competitor of Lea & Perrin's.
Little C's Pasta Helper
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
2 cups cooked egg noodles
1 package brown gravy mix
1 onion, chopped
1 (4 oz) can mushrooms
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
couple of dashes Worcestershire sauce
1 heaping teaspoon garlic, minced
extra virgin olive oil, just enough to cover bottom of pan

Directions:
Cook noodles according to package directions. Cook brown gravy according to package directions. In a skillet, add enough olive oil to cover bottom of skillet and heat over medium heat. Add beef, onions, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir. Cook beef until no longer pink. Add mushrooms. Stir. When noodles are cooked, drain well, then add to meat, pour gravy over top of noodles and meat. Stir. Enjoy!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Italian Chicken

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

 
The modern chicken is a descendant of Red Junglefowl hybrids along with the Grey Junglefowl first raised thousands of years ago in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent.

Chicken as a meat has been depicted in Babylonian carvings from around 600 BC. Chicken was one of the most common meats available in the Middle Ages. It was widely believed to be easily digested and considered to be one of the most neutral foodstuff. It was eaten over most of the Eastern hemisphere and a hunter of different kinds of chicken such as capons, pullets and hens wre eaten. It was one of the basic ingredients in the white dish, a stew usuall consisting of chicken and fried onions cooked in milk and seasoned with spices and sugar.

Chicken consumption in the USA increased during World War II due to a shortage of beef and pork. In Europe, consumption of chicken overtook that of beef and veal in 1996, linked to consumer awareness of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy or B.S.E.

Italian Chicken
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
4 boneless skinless chicken breast
1 cup Italian salad dressing
grated Parmesan cheese, for garnish
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
parsley, for garnish

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking dish. Add chicken to a resealable bag, Italian salad dressing, salt and pepper. Making sure to coat chicken. Place chicken in baking dish and cook for 25 to 30 minutes, or until chicken no longer pink in center. Garnish with cheese and parsley. Enjoy!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Christine's Pantry Guest

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

I'm so happy to have a chance to know y'all. I have wonderful folks who hang out on christinespantry.blogspot.com. Occasionally I will send out a request for submission to email subscribers so that my friends and fans can share their heritage recipes, photo(s) and stories with us. So make sure you're signed up, for possible inclusion in Christine's Pantry Guest. Also watch your inbox for details on how to submit your family's recipe. I can hardly wait to see what y'all will send me.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below.

Thanks,
Christine


Sunday, June 19, 2011

Christine's Smoked Sausage and Rice

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Zatarain's was started in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna by Emile A, Zatarain, SR, who took out a trademark and began to market root beer in 1889. He expanded his product range to include mustard pickled vegetables, and extracts. Then he moved into the spice business and became known for New Orleans and Cajun style products. In 1963 the family sold the business. The company was acquired in 2003 by McCormick & Company, the world's largest spice company.
By http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatarain's

Christine's Smoked Sausage and Rice
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 (14 oz) smoked pecan sausage, cut into 1/4 inch slices, then halve each slice
1 (8 oz) box yellow rice (I used Zatarain's)
1 small onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, chopped
extra virgin olive oil, just enough to cover bottom of pan
1 teaspoon pepper
pinch salt
1 tablespoon garlic and herb seasoning

Directions:
Cook rice according to package directions. Place olive oil in skillet over medium heat. Add onions and bell peppers, cook until tender. Add sausage, pepper, garlic and herb seasoning and salt. Once rice is cooked, add rice to sausage and stir well. Enjoy!

Friday, June 17, 2011

Italian Cucumber Salad

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Hopefully, y'all getting ready for Father's Day. I have a few recipes to help you show your hard working dad how much you appreciate him.

Credit for originating Father's Day is generally given to Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington, whose dad, a Civil War veteran, raised her and her five siblings after their mother died in childbirth. She is said to have had the idea in 1909 while listening to a sermon on Mother's Day, which at the time was becoming established as a holiday. Local religious leaders supported the idea, and the first Father's Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, the month of the birthday of Dodd's dad. In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge gave his support to the observance, and in 1966 President Lyndon B. Johnson officially proclaimed it a national holiday. Observance on the third Sunday of June was decreed by law in 1972.

Italian Cucumber Salad
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 pint grape tomatoes, wash
1 cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 small red onion, sliced
pinch salt
1 bottle Italian salad dressing

Directions:
In a large bowl, add chopped cucumber, red onion, tomatoes and salt. Add about half the bottle of Italian dressing. Mix together. Cover and place in refrigerator about 2 to 3 hours before serving. Enjoy!

Here's a few recipes to help you:





Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Mayo Chocolate Cake

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

When most of us hear the word chocolate, we picture a bar, a box of bonbons, or a bunny. The verb that comes to mind is probably "eat," not "drink," and the most apt adjective would seem to be "sweet." But for about 90 percent of chocolate's long history, it was strictly a beverage, and sugar didn't have anything to do with it.

I often call chocolate the best-known food that nobody knows anything about," said Alexandra Leaf, a self-described "chocolate educator" who runs a business called Chocolate Tours of New York City.

The terminology can be a little confusing, but most experts these days use the term "cacao" to refer to the plant or its beans before processing, while the term "chocolate" refers to anything made from the beans, she explained. "Cocoa" generally refers to chocolate in a powdered form, although it can also be a British form of "cacao. Etymologists trace the origin of the word "chocolate" to the Aztec word "xocoatl," which referred to a bitter drink brewed from cacao beans. The Latin name for the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao, means "food of the gods''.

Many modern historians have estimated that chocolate has been around for about 2000 years, but recent research suggests that it may be even older. In the book The True History of Chocolate, authors Sophie and Michael Coe make a case that the earliest linguistic evidence of chocolate consumption stretches back three or even four millennia, to pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica such as the Olmec.

Last November, anthropologists from the University of Pennsylvania announced the discovery of cacao residue on pottery excavated in Honduras that could date back as far as 1400 B.C.E. It appears that the sweet pulp of the cacao fruit, which surrounds the beans, was fermented into an alcoholic beverage of the time.

Who would have thought, looking at this, that you can eat it?" said Richard Hetzler, executive chef of the café at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, as he displayed a fresh cacao pod during a recent chocolate-making demonstration. "You would have to be pretty hungry, and pretty creative!

It's hard to pin down exactly when chocolate was born, but it's clear that it was cherished from the start. For several centuries in pre-modern Latin America, cacao beans were considered valuable enough to use as currency. One bean could be traded for a tamale, while 100 beans could purchase a good turkey hen, according to a 16th-century Aztec document.

Both the Mayans and Aztecs believed the cacao bean had magical, or even divine, properties, suitable for use in the most sacred rituals of birth, marriage and death. According to Chloe Doutre-Roussel's book The Chocolate Connoisseur, Aztec sacrifice victims who felt too melancholy to join in ritual dancing before their death were often given a gourd of chocolate (tinged with the blood of previous victims) to cheer them up.

Sweetened chocolate didn't appear until Europeans discovered the Americas and sampled the native cuisine. Legend has it that the Aztec king Montezuma welcomed the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes with a banquet that included drinking chocolate, having tragically mistaken him for a reincarnated deity instead of a conquering invader. Chocolate didn't suit the foreigners' tastebuds at first –one described it in his writings as "a bitter drink for pigs" – but once mixed with honey or cane sugar, it quickly became popular throughout Spain.

By the 17th century, chocolate was a fashionable drink throughout Europe, believed to have nutritious, medicinal and even aphrodisiac properties (it's rumored that Casanova was especially fond of the stuff).  But it remained largely a privilege of the rich until the invention of the steam engine made mass production possible in the late 1700s. In 1828, a Dutch chemist found a way to make powdered chocolate by removing about half the natural fat (cacao butter) from chocolate liquor, pulverizing what remained and treating the mixture with alkaline salts to cut the bitter taste. His product became known as "Dutch cocoa," and it soon led to the creation of solid chocolate.

The creation of the first modern chocolate bar is credited to Joseph Fry, who in 1847 discovered that he could make a moldable chocolate paste by adding melted cacao butter back into Dutch cocoa.

By 1868, a little company called Cadbury was marketing boxes of chocolate candies in England. Milk chocolate hit the market a few years later, pioneered by another name that may ring a bell – Nestle.

In America, chocolate was so valued during the Revolutionary War that it was included in soldiers' rations and used in lieu of wages. While most of us probably wouldn't settle for a chocolate paycheck these days, statistics show that the humble cacao bean is still a powerful economic force. Chocolate manufacturing is a more than 4-billion-dollar industry in the United States, and the average American eats at least half a pound of the stuff per month.
In the 20th century, the word "chocolate" expanded to include a range of affordable treats with more sugar and additives than actual cacao in them, often made from the hardiest but least flavorful of the bean varieties (forastero). 

But more recently, there's been a "chocolate revolution," Leaf said, marked by an increasing interest in high-quality, handmade chocolates and sustainable, effective cacao farming and harvesting methods. Major corporations like Hershey's have expanded their artisanal chocolate lines by purchasing smaller producers known for premium chocolates, such as Scharffen Berger and Dagoba, while independent chocolatiers continue to flourish as well.

I see more and more American artisans doing incredible things with chocolate, Leaf said. "Although, I admit that I tend to look at the world through cocoa-tinted glasses''.
By http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-of-chocolate.html

Mayo Chocolate Cake
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 (18.5 oz) chocolate fudge cake mix
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
nonstick cooking spray

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a large bowl, add cake mix, mayonnaise, water and vanilla extract. Mix well. Pour batter into bundt pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Let cool 15 minutes before removing cake from pan. Enjoy!










Monday, June 13, 2011

Coleslaw

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

We know from Apicius that Ancient Roman cooks prepared shredded cabbage dressed with vinegar, eggs and spices. Food historians generally agree the term "cole slaw" is of Dutch origin, implying perhaps that the true progenitor of modern coleslaw is most likely a Medieval creation with Roman roots. Mayonnaise is an 18th century invention, meaning the recipe (as we know it today) is only about 200 years old.

Coleslaw means literally ''cabbage salad''. English borrowed and adapted the word from Dutch koolsla at the end of the eighteenth century, probably from Dutch settlers in the USA, and the first printed example of it shows its outlandishness tamed to cold slaw--a folk-etymological modification often repeated in later years. English does however have its own equivalent to Dutch kool, 'cabbage', namely cole. Like kool, this comes ultimately from Latin caulis, ''cabbage'', whose underlying etymological meaning is hollow stem.
An A to Z or Food and Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 85).

Coleslaw. Also, "cabbage salad," Shredded cabbage, mayonnaise, and seasonings, usually served cold as a side dish. The words are from Dutch koolsla, a combination of kool, "cabbage," and sla, "salad" a dish that was known in America in print by 1785. Because it is usually served cold, some call the dish "cold slaw" in contrast to "hot slaw," but there is no relation to the temperature in the etymology''.
The Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 92).

The earliest European settlers on North America's eastern shores brought cabbage seeds with them, and cabbage was a general favorite throughout the colonies. The Dutch who founded New Netherland (New York State)...grew cabbage extensively along the Hudson River. They served it in their old-country ways, often as koolsla (shredded cabbage salad). This dish became popular throughout the colonies and survives as coleslaw...By the 1880s, cabbage and its cousins had fallen from favor with the upper class because of the strong sulfurous odors these vegetables give off when cooking...But this sturdy and versatile vegetable never disappeared from middle-class kitchens.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 147) .

Cool slaw, cabbage salad, has, of course become Ecole slaw; in the nineteenth century housewives who had forgotten, or never known, that cool is Dutch fo "cabbage," were already miscalling the dish "cold slaw," which gave illegitimate birth to "warm slaw''.
Eating in America: A History, Waverley Rood & Richard de Rochemont [William Morrow and Company:New York] 1976 (p. 302-3).
By http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodsalads.html#coleslaw

Coleslaw
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 (16 oz) bag coleslaw
1 /2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon mustard
2 tablespoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated onion
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon roasted garlic herb
1 tablespoon sugar

Directions:
In a large bowl, toss together coleslaw and parsley. In a small bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Add to coleslaw, toss well. Taste and adjust seasoning, if desired. Chill until ready to serve. Enjoy!


Saturday, June 11, 2011

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Production of Brussels sprouts in the USA began around 1800, when French settlers brought them to Louisiana. The first plantings in California's Central Coast began in the 1920s, with significant production beginning in the 1940s. Currently there are several thousand acres planted in coastal areas of San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Monterey Counties of California which offer an ideal combination of coastal fog and cool temperatures year round. The harvest season lasts from June through January. They are also grown in Baja California, Mexico, where the harvest season is from December through June.

Much of the United States production is in California, with a smaller percentage of the crop grown in Skagit Valley, WA, where cool springs, mild summers and rich soil abounds and to lesser degree on Long Island, NY. Total United States production is approximately 32,000 tons, with a value of $27 million.

80% to 85% of US production is for the frozen food market, with the remainder for fresh consumption. Once harvested, sprouts last 3 to 5 weeks under ideal near freezing conditions before wilting and discoloring, and about half as long at refrigerator temperature.
By http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_sprout

Award... I would like to take a moment to thank http://kristygourmet.blogspot.com for this honor. Please take a moment and visit her blog. Her blog is wonderful. I always enjoy reading her post.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
1 (14 oz) Brussels Sprouts, thawed (I used Pictsweet)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large mixing bowl add Brussels sprouts, olive oil, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Toss well. Line a sheet pan with foil and spray with a nonstick cooking spray.  Pour Brussels sprout onto pan and spread out so sprouts are in a single layer.  Roast for 30 to 35 minutes or until lightly browned, crisp and fork tender. Turning once. Serve warm. Enjoy!


Thursday, June 9, 2011

Easy Cheezy Chicken & Rice Casserole

Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.


Is it hard for you to make a good looking casserole? I have tried many times to make a good looking casserole. I'm thinking maybe that might never happen. The casserole I have for you today taste great. Yummy! Appearance is another story. Maybe that's why cheese so popular in casseroles. The smell is wonderful. I do love a good casserole. They are easy, feed the entire family, affordable. Casseroles freeze well.

There are over 40,000 varieties of rice. Rice is a staple food for more then 50% of the world population. Rice is grown in every continent except Antarctica. 

Easy Cheezy Chicken & Rice Casserole
Copyright 2011 Christine's Pantry. All rights reserved.

Ingredients:
2 cans chicken breast, drained
2 cups cooked rice
1 1/2 cups finely shredded cheddar cheese
1 (10.5 oz) can cream of chicken soup
pinch salt
1 teaspoon pepper

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add ingredients in large bowl. Mix well. Pour into greased 3 quart casserole dish. Bake about 15 minutes. Enjoy!



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