Scraps From My Kitchen Table

For the past two years I have been cooking more and more with fresh herbs instead of dried spices. Needless to say, it has taken my recipes to a whole new level and with so much more flava!! I have also found that I really, really enjoy chopping vegetables and herbs more than I imagined possible. I actually find chopping in the kitchen extremely therapeutic for me. Who would have thought?! My spaghetti sauce, chili, soups, and even my stuffed bell peppers have been completely reformed. When ever I can I use fresh tomatoes instead of canned. So much better. I have been watching the food channels almost daily on my Ipad while I am in the kitchen preparing for dinner. Not too long ago I made the best version of stroganoff I have ever eaten just by adding Italian Mascarpone to thicken the gravy rather than the traditional sour cream. No bragging just saying food education is a very good thing! Now, Italian cream cheese is sweeter and a bit milder than our major brand over here but it ma...

Quite some time ago, about two years or more, after a few scares with the peanut factories in the news, I was forced to find alternative to my beloved peanut butter! And even though I didn't consume peanut butter on a weekly basis, it was always like an old friend always ready to pair up with a fresh pot of vegetable soup, or a mid day hunger crisis. When I noticed the flavor of my long time peanut butter brand had changed for the worse, I began seeking out other brands to take it's place, from old time faves to new promising brands, nothing seemed to taste like a fresh ground peanut anymore so I began to look at other nut alternatives which led me to delicious almond butter! Now I have always favored the crunchy pb&j over the smooth, so the slightly crunchiness of this new butter was not offensive to me at all. So, I began to use almond butter for my occasional pb&j fix. Well, then there was also something else new on the market! They called it Nutella! Of course being...

Out with the OLD and in with the NEW! Yep! That is how I feel about this delicious side dish I created before the holidays arrived. I have always loved ____________, and while my sister and I were shopping at The Fresh Market, I came across something I had never seen! There in the produce section was the FRESH version of this delectable yumminess that I have always loved! I was amazed! I picked out two of them right away! I had an idea of how I would prepare them in a way I had never before. Once in a while I like to roast a pork loin so when I decided to roast this one, I decided to make my new found fresh version of my favorite root plant but I knew hubby would never eat it no matter how I prepared it, so I had to come up with something for him as well. (As per usual for my meat and potatoes man.) So, seeing that I was thinking of roasting these instead of my normal stove top method, I decided to add some of the wonderful sweet potatoes that I had purchased previously at the fa...