Retrodivas Kitchen

This is a staple at my fourth barbeques. A twist on the traditional southern dish, this brings festive color to your table.

Patriotic White Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

1 pint strawberries

1/2 bag white chocolate chips

1 tablespoon milk or half and half

blue glitter sugar or nonpareils

Microwave, in a plastic bowl, the white chocolate chips and milk until heated. Wash strawberries and when chocolate is ready, dip half way up the strawberry, then dip a third of the way into the blue glitter sugar or nonpareils. Set on plate to dry.

Parade Publications, part of Advance Publications, which plans to introduce a newspaper magazine and a Web site under the Dash brand. No relation, of course, to the Mrs. Dash brand, but wouldn’t that be an interesting paring?

The magazine is supposed to be geared primarily towards suburban moms who are interested in the simple, fast, delicious genre of food.

Prototypes are being shared with advertisers and press this week, but the actual print magazine won’t launch to the public until February. The online recipe database will launch in September at DashRecipes.com – don’t bother clicking now, though, it redirects you to Parade Publications.

“To help differentiate Dash from other food publications, it will collaborate editorially with Parade as well as Bon Appétit magazine, part of the Condé Nast Publications division of Advance; the archives of Gourmet magazine, also part of Condé Nast; and the Web site epicurious.com, part of Condé Nast Digital,” according to the New York Times.

Dash will, at the beginning, have a circulation of about eight million, and will be carried by 100 of the newspapers that currently carry Parade. Look for Dash to appear in your newspapers on the “best food day,” generally Wednesday or Thursday each week.

It is SO tempting to not cook when it gets warm and just stay outside and play until it gets dark. Or hang out on my back porch and drink wine with friends. But, the family still needs to eat, and I abhor spending tons of money on eating out, so dinner must go on.

This is a simple, dead easy time saver that requires very little prep. I found all the ingredients already prepped at Trader Joe’s, but you can prep them yourself, of course. It just takes the easy out of it.

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I’ve been working on getting my kids to understand that real food doesn’t come in powder form, or in a box, or in a can. It’s not an easy thing to do when processed foods are so popular and even sold at school, but I’m keeping up the good fight.

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I’ve heard people say that there is some amazing dining here in my hometown of Virginia Beach. I always have to wonder exactly there they are talking about, because I can’t seem to find it. Then again, my idea of “amazing dining” is not an all you can eat seafood buffet.

It was a beautiful day today and I had about an hour to kill sans children, so I stopped into The Green Onion at Great Neck for an espresso. I had never been in before, and for the life of me, I don’t know why. Maybe because the building used to house a Burger King when I was in high school, and I’ve always just associated the place with that. But they haven’t been there for years, and several restaurants have cycled through the place, but I’ve just never gone. Today, however, I was pleased to wander in and find out that there is beautiful outdoor dining in the back with a fire pit, heat lamps for the winter, and comfortable tables and chairs next to a fish pond that doesn’t appear to be a mosquito breeding ground.

The staff is super attentive and friendly without being annoying, and the espresso was well made and tasty. Even though I had no plans to eat, I was talked into a caprese pasta salad, which I had never had before, and it was amazing. Fresh mozarella balls, ripe cherry tomatoes, bow tie pasta, and a thick basalmic dressing made the simple dish amazingly delicious.

Lastly, they were clearly a place after my own heart, as they have a complete cheese menu to choose from. I didn’t partake today, as I just wasn’t that hungry, but the next time I want to go for a wine and cheese tray, I know exactly where I’m going.

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I needed to whip up an easy dish and take it over to my mom’s house for dinner tonight, and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand for this dish. It’s always a hit, and tonight was no exception. I threw it into a disposable baking tray, covered with aluminum, and took it over and baked it in my mom’s fancy new Samsung oven, of which I am extremely envious. My oven is from the ’60s. No lie!

My awesome recipe is after the jump.

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So I recently gave up on my old waffle maker and purchased a new Calphalon No Peek Belgian Waffle Maker from Amazon.

We are huge fans of waffles around here, and I got tired of buying the premade ones that, frankly, kind of suck. So I started making a large batch of my own and freezing them so that everyone could enjoy them when they wanted.

At any rate, this waffle maker has pleased every single person in the family. I love it because it doesn’t make a mess, is super easy to clean, totally nonstick, and it makes the biggest, fluffiest waffles in our household’s history. This could be because my last waffle maker was just really crappy, but this thing is well worth every penny I spent. A most excellent waffle recipe is after the jump.

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I needed a quick dinner dish – something that I could throw together in about 30 minutes without a huge amount of fuss. It’s hard around my house sometimes in the evening – between playdates, sports practice, girl scouts, and any other random thing that happens to come up, making dinner has to be shoved in my day somehow. Especially since we are trying really hard not to eat out so often.

So, standing in front of my refrigerator the other day, I came up with this dish. You can add  fresh spinach to this dish – I would have, but I didn’t even think about it at the time. Chop three cups worth and saute it with the garlic.

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