Stop making Annie's Mac and Cheese wrong!

 It has been a while! Today I'm going to point you to my YouTube video on Annie's Macaroni and Cheese. I realized after several sub-par batches of this fantastic mac n' cheese that I must be doing something wrong. The next time I made Annie's Mac and Cheese, I took the time to actually read the instructions on the box. I know, weird right? It turns out, you don't make Annie's like you would a brand that comes with cheese that is already in a somewhat liquid form. If you boil your noodles and then just dump in your powder, milk, and butter on top of them, you're going to end up with chunks of powder in your finished product. A few weeks later, I saw a friend of mine post a video on Instagram where he was doing just that. Same as I used to do. I knew there were others out there who needed to know the right way to make this dish. Enjoy!

Welch's Refreshingly Simple

I received this free from bzzagent to try it out and tell people how I felt about it. I opened the box excitedly because I’m a big fan of Welch’s juice and couldn’t wait to try out a new product. I first noticed the label; very clean and simple. It was clear that they wanted to showcase the simplicity of the ingredients and carried that through into the design of the packaging.

Since this was promoted as a very simple and natural product, my next thought was to check out the ingredients. Here’s where I got my first surprise: the first two ingredients listed were water and sugar. Granted, I would rather have natural sugar than High Fructose Corn Syrup, I was surprised that a product billed as natural would have added sugar. Not just added sugar, but so much added sugar that it was the second ingredient! Needless to say, I was disappointed to see this.

Now it was time to taste the juice. After all, natural, un-natural, sugar, no sugar, what does any of it matter if the juice doesn’t taste good? I poured a cup (and also poured some for the kids) and had a look. The color was appetizing; a soft yellowish color. The smell was as you would expect from a passion fruit juice. I took a sip and was impressed with the taste. It did seem a little sweet to me (I feel like fruit has enough natural sugar and doesn’t really need more to taste good) but overall was very refreshing. I poured a sip for each of my children to make sure they liked it before pouring a full cup. Each of them immediately asked for more. It’s fair to say they were very pleased with the taste.

 Overall, the juice tasted good, and was composed of a much better ingredient list than other juices on the market today. My only complaint is the addition of the high percentage of sugar. The look and taste were very well done, but due to the sugar content, it’s not likely that I would purchase this product for my family.

Grits!!!!!

Ok, so it's not something that I have just tried for the first time and fell in love with. I've been eating grits my whole life. I've been without for a while because I would forget to add it to the grocery list or whatever so I had forgotten how much I liked them. I bought some a few weeks ago and fell in love all over again. For the most part, here is what's needed for perfect grits: First, the grits need to be thick. You can't have some sort of nasty, watery, runny slop on your plate and call it grits. That's just gross. The proper thickness of grits is about like pudding. When you drop it on the plate it should stay there and not go mixing in with the rest of the food. We called them "Sculpting Grits" growing up because we could build small grit forts and other shapes out of them on our plates... ok so we built things out of grits, that's not so bad right? Next, you need butter. As soon as the grits are done cooking, you drop a blob of butter in there along with the next ingredient: cheese! I grew up on mild cheddar, but when that ran out any old cheese would do. So you drop in the butter and cheese, stir it around for a second, then put the top on the pot while you finish the rest of the meal. One more round of stirring before serving and you have the best grits ever. I tend to mix them in with my scrambled eggs and eat them all together, but that's not necessary. As long as the grits are right, you don't really need anything else.

Tres Leches Cake

I recently returned from a business trip to Puerto Rico where I was able to try Tres Leches (Three Milks) cake for the first time. WOW! Here's the thing though, all of the recipe's I find online are actual cakes, the dessert I had was in a cup which was full of liquid with chunks of the cake floating in it. While this may not sound that good with my crude description, it was one of the best desserts I have ever eaten. I have since found that this is a very popular dessert in Latin culture. I guess I will have to play around with some recipes to see if I can re-create what I ate in Puerto Rico. If you ever see this on the menu when you're out and about, I would recommend that you try it. You owe it to yourself!

Olive Garden's Chicken & Shrimp Carbonara

I can't believe it! This is amazing! Let me back up... We went to dinner at Olive Garden (Yummmm!) the other night with my sister and brother in law. After perusing the menu, my brother in law decides to go with the Chicken and Shrimp Carbonara. When it arrives at the table, he takes a quick sniff of it and comments that it smells a good bit like Carino's Chicken Scaloppini! Well, as you may imagin, I was sceptical. After tasting it, he said it even tasted a good bit like the Scaloppini. He offered me some and I was floored at the similarities! Now, there were some obvious differences, like the existance of shrimp in the Carbonara, and the fact that the chicken in Olive Garden's recipe is prepared differently. The overall affect, though, is a delicious dish remanisant of my favorite meal of all time: Carino's Chicken Scaloppini! If you have a chance to try it, I highly recommend you take it.