These days it is not often that I try new recipes. It's the same ol story. I'm single, lazy, and poor. But I really want to try more recipes from my Mideast cookbook and so I tried this one because I had all the ingredients.

It turns out that this is one of those recipes that gets better the next day. On the day I cooked it I thought, "it's good, but could use more spice". Then I parceled it into single servings and froze them for work lunches. Today I had one and it was SOOOO much better. I also think that this recipe could easily be done in a crockpot and done as a stew by just throwing in the rice or, in my case, quinoa.

PALAVER CHICKEN

* 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
* 2 garlic cloves, crushed
* 2 tablespoons butter
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1 onion, finely chopped
* 4 tomatoes, chopped (I used a can of diced tomatoes)
* 2 tablespoons peanut butter
* 2 1/2 cups chicken stock
* 1 teaspoon dried thyme
* 8 ounces frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
* 1 chili pepper, seeded and chopped (I used a medium jalapeno)
* salt
* pepper

Cut chicken into thin slices, place in a bowl and stir in garlic and a little salt and pepper.

Melt the butter in a large frying pan and fry the chicken over medium heat, turning once or twice to brown evenly. Transfer to a plate using a slotted spoon and set aside.

Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onion and tomatoes over high heat for 5 minutes, till soft.

Reduce the heat, add the peanut butter and half of the stock and blend together well.

Cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring all the time to prevent the peanut butter burning, then add the remaining stock, thyme, spinach, chili and seasonings.

Stir in the chicken slices and cook over medium heat for 10-15 minutes till chicken is cooked through.

Pour the chicken mixture into a warmed serving dish and serve with boiled yams, quinoa, or rice.


Peanut Butter

If you like tri-tip, you need to try Buckhorn Grill.

The Grills are an offshoot of the original Buckhorn restaurant in Winters. The Buckhorn has long been known for serving Certified Angus Beef that has been aged for 21 to 42 days. They also serve great game such as antelope, buffalo, and duck.

The Grills are a semi-fast food offshoot of the restaurant. After they had success selling tri-tip sandwiches at the Napa farmers' market, they opened their first Grill and now they have a total of six throughout northern California. The one in Sacramento is located at 18th and L Streets. You order up at a counter and then your food is served up in about five minutes. They are most famous for the tri-tip, but they also serve salmon and chicken.

I agree that the Buckhorn's tri-tip is of the very best quality and never see a need to order the salmon or chicken. The meat has been aged 21 days, marinated, rubbed with seasoning, and then cooked over a wood fire and smoked. The meat is always tender and delicious.

Another favorite item at the Grill is their Roadhouse Onions. If you like onion strings then I would say the Grill has the best I've had. Their onions are sliced super thin, battered and the deep fried to perfection. What makes them stand out is that they are super light, crisp and totally greaseless. Other restaurants the strings will be clumped and a bit mushy from grease. Not here.

I'm a small eater and so usually I just order the small plate of tri-tip and Roadhouse Onions. But the other day I went for the full plate which includes a roll, mashed potatoes and roasted veggies. I switched the veggies for my onions, but was really disappointed in the mashed potatoes. They were like potato porridge after having had too much milk added to them. I was remembering the movie Close Encounters when Richard Dreyfuss starts sculpting a giant Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes. They were nice and stiff. If you had used my Grill potatoes it would have been the mudslide down the side of the mountain.

But generally the food is good and the service is as well.

Shortcuts often don't work out in gourmet cooking. Such was the case with a recipe I made today of a Thai corn chowder. So...I won't be critiquing the corn chowder recipe because I don't feel I did it justice by using shortcuts and now want to make it again the proper way.

You see, I shortcutted by not using fresh ginger or lemongrass. Instead, I used the pastes of each that come in the tubes at the produce section. That might have been OK but that after I finished everything I checked the expiration dates on the tubes and then were LONG past. So let's just say the flavor I was wanting just wasn't there. Silly, considering I have an awesome Asian market a block from my house and I was in there TWICE today! Sheesh!

So, although it was good, the chowder wasn't great. Not like I think it could be with fresh ingredients. So I will make it again.

BUT....
I do want to share my new favorite Pampered Chef tool. Each season they come out with something that I'm not all that thrilled about until I start using it. Then I just LOVE it.


This season it is our Kernel Cutter for taking corn off the cob. It works great!


This is definitely a must if you like to use fresh corn in recipes or if you have someone who cannot eat corn on the cob - like kids with braces. I've used it quite a few times this season. And it is way safer than using a knife to slice off the kernels. It is only $7.50. Let me know if you want one. I have an order going in soon.

You gotta love when you go to the sale table at the bookstore and find a great deal. I got a nice cookbook that included recipes from Spain, the Mideast, and Africa for just $5. Big and full of pictures. It had a recipe for apricot bundles that I had to alter for size.

With apricots at their peak right now, this is a great recipe and super easy.


Apricot Bundles

6 apricots, halved and pitted
1/2 c almond meal
1/4 c sugar
1 T rose water
4 sheets of phyllo dough cut into squares
honey

Heat oven to 350 degrees.
In a bowl, mix together the almond meal, sugar, and rosewater to create a paste. Take a tablespoon of the paste and sandwich it in the middle of two apricot halves. Place a filled apricot in the center of a phyllo square and pinch/twist the ends together to create a boat around the apricot. Place on a baking sheet. Drizzle the bundles with honey. Bake bundles for 20 minutes. Serve hot with ice cream.


Apricot

Wheat berries were something new for me. I had seen this recipe done on the Food Network show Healthy Appetite and realized that I had eaten them before, but never seen them in the store. Off I went to the Food Coop and the bulk bins. They had both hard and soft berries, so I opted for the soft and got about a cup and a half of them.

Wheat berries are the whole wheat kernel before it has been stripped of the bran and germ. It is a true whole grain packed with nutrients. When cooked, it is a chewy kernel with a nutty flavor. You can use it in salads or even eat it for breakfast with milk and honey or your favorite cereal toppings. If you are industrious, you can grind raw wheat berries into your own whole wheat flour.

The first step for the salad is to boil the wheat berries for about an hour to get them tender. Then you can combine them with chopped veggies, herbs, and lemon juice and voila! You have a super healthy salad. Basically this is the same recipe as my quinoa salad, just with wheat berries.

Wheat berry salad

1 c wheat berries, cooked and drained
2 ears of white corn or canned
1/2 c chopped red onion
1/2 c chopped bell pepper
1/4 c raisins or dried cranberries
1/4 c red wine vinegar
1/4 c olive oil
Juice from one large lemon
Fresh ground salt and pepper to taste.

Cook the corn and after it has cooled, cut off the kernels into a bowl. Add remaining ingredients. Toss together and enjoy!

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

This tart, like many of the world's great foods has its own mythic beginnings…or several mythic beginnings. Legend has it in 1820 (or was it in the 1860s?) Mrs. Greaves, landlady of The White Horse Inn in Bakewell, Derbyshire (England), asked her cook to produce a pudding for her guests. Either her instructions could have been clearer or he should have paid better attention to what she said because what he made was not what she asked for. The cook spread the jam on top of the frangipane mixture rather than the other way around. Or maybe instead of a sweet rich shortcrust pastry case to hold the jam for a strawberry tart, he made a regular pastry and mixed the eggs and sugar separately and poured that over the jam—it depends upon which legend you follow. Regardless of what the venerable Mrs. Greaves’ cook did or didn’t do, lore has it that her guests loved it and an ensuing pastry-clad industry was born. Bakewell tarts are a classic English dessert, abounding in supermarket baking sections and in ready-made, mass-produced forms, some sporting a thick sugary icing and glazed cherry on top for decorative effect.

I did this challenge at the beginning of the month with the results pictured. I was disappointed in my results and wanted to try another one toward the end of the month, but was unable to due to money, time, and temperatures reaching 103 degrees here. I do hope to try it again, but not sure when.

What didn't I like? Well, I hope that you will take the time to look at some of the posts by other Daring Bakers. My disappointment lies in that I seem to have too much jam and too little frangipane. Most of the others seem to have a much larger frangipane layer on top. Flavorwise, I think it was a little too much almond. Next time I would eliminate or use much less almond extract. But it was still delicious, especially when served with the homemade rosewater/vanilla ice cream I made.





SWEET SHORTCRUST PASTRY

Prep time: 15-20 minutes
Resting time: 30 minutes (minimum)
Equipment needed: bowls, box grater, cling film

225g (8oz) all purpose flour
30g (1oz) sugar
2.5ml (½ tsp) salt
110g (4oz) unsalted butter, cold (frozen is better)
2 (2) egg yolks
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract (optional)
15-30ml (1-2 Tbsp) cold water

Sift together flour, sugar and salt. Grate butter into the flour mixture, using the large hole-side of a box grater. Using your finger tips only, and working very quickly, rub the fat into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Set aside.

Lightly beat the egg yolks with the almond extract (if using) and quickly mix into the flour mixture. Keep mixing while dribbling in the water, only adding enough to form a cohesive and slightly sticky dough.

Form the dough into a disc, wrap in cling and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

FRANGIPANE
Prep time: 10-15 minutes
Equipment needed: bowls, hand mixer, rubber spatula

125g (4.5oz) unsalted butter, softened
125g (4.5oz) icing sugar
3 (3) eggs
2.5ml (½ tsp) almond extract
125g (4.5oz) ground almonds
30g (1oz) all purpose flour

Cream butter and sugar together for about a minute or until the mixture is primrose in color and very fluffy. Scrape down the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. The batter may appear to curdle. In the words of Douglas Adams: Don’t panic. Really. It’ll be fine. After all three are in, pour in the almond extract and mix for about another 30 seconds and scrape down the sides again. With the beaters on, spoon in the ground nuts and the flour. Mix well. The mixture will be soft, keep its slightly curdled look (mostly from the almonds) and retain its pallid yellow color.

ASSEMBLING THE TART

Place the chilled dough disc on a lightly floured surface. If it's overly cold, you will need to let it become acclimatised for about 15 minutes before you roll it out. Flour the rolling pin and roll the pastry to 5mm (1/4”) thickness, by rolling in one direction only (start from the centre and roll away from you), and turning the disc a quarter turn after each roll. When the pastry is to the desired size and thickness, transfer it to the tart pan, press in and trim the excess dough. Patch any holes, fissures or tears with trimmed bits. Chill in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200C/400F.

Remove shell from freezer, spread as even a layer as you can of jam onto the pastry base. Top with frangipane, spreading to cover the entire surface of the tart. Smooth the top and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Five minutes before the tart is done, the top will be poofy and brownish. Remove from oven and strew flaked almonds on top and return to the heat for the last five minutes of baking.

The finished tart will have a golden crust and the frangipane will be tanned, poofy and a bit spongy-looking. Remove from the oven and cool on the counter. Serve warm, with crème fraîche, whipped cream or custard sauce if you wish.

When you slice into the tart, the almond paste will be firm, but slightly squidgy and the crust should be crisp but not tough.

There always seems to be kinks to iron out when you do something grand for the first time. Such was the case with today's Great American Food and Music Fest held at Shoreline in Mountain View.

The festival was the idea of Ed Levine, writer of Smart Eats and a few books. The idea was to get some of the best foods from across the country and couple that with music for an all day foodie event. For $40 ($35 in advance) you got admission to the event and your first plate of food from one of the vendors for free.


I'll get to the food and events in a bit, but the biggest faux pas was a food bracelet system that failed. After you entered the venue you were given a wristband that could be 'loaded' with money for making purchases at the vendors without having to have cash at each location. Each band had one meal credit on it already. I arrived when the event opened at noon and used my credit pretty quickly. I chose the best dollar value, the Texas BBQ ($12), before the lines started. Good thing I did. An hour later the whole system had broken down. Management announced that they were going to have to switch to a cash system and everyone would have to go to the wristband booth to have their bands converted to vouchers. What a mess! Lines were huge! My estimate is that it would have taken over an hour to reach the front of the line. People were mad. I wonder if a riot broke out after I left.


The day's schedule included cooking demonstrations, cookbook signings, and bands playing music. Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Anne Burrell, and other food personalities were there. Flay and Fieri were featured late in the day, so I just stuck around to see Burrell's demo of Grilled scallops with pickled watermelon and two different grilled pizettas.


Gene Burns from KGO AM radio interviewed some of the vendors for his Dining Around show. They were broadcasting live. I never heard him before, but I sure was unimpressed when he starting calling his guests Sunnyside BBQ when their name was actually Southside BBQ. Usually a good idea to get the name right.


There were quite a few bands also featured. Above is Jeremy Buck and the Bang. There was also Little Feat, Marshall Crenshaw, and others. I could see enjoying a day of good food and music. One drag was that the place got so crowded you could barely move. It was incredible. Being there early, it had been a slow start. Then I sat down for one band and one demo, stood up, and voila! The place was jammed! I was shocked!


One area that I saw really underutilized was their 'market' section. It was an opportunity for kitchen and food specialty vendors to set up booths and show/sell their products. With so much out there in the world of food, this could have been a huge area filled with booths. Instead, there were about four vendors.


This is Leah Aguayo, a school teacher turned salsa entrepreneur. She had samples of her medium and hot salsas. Here's a local, small business woman who was promoting her salsa at a big food event. Why weren't there more like her? By the way, her salsa was good. Great texture and flavor with lots of cilantro and no raw onion.


I had two wristbands because I had gotten them as media passes. My intent was to use the second free meal plate from the other wristband, but with the meltdown of the system, I decided to forgo the freebie and just pay for my dessert. I wasn't interested in standing in those lines! I went to see about the famous Junior's cheesecake from New York ($5). Unimpressed. It tasted like it was a sour cream cheesecake and it was good, but it wasn't the best cheesecake I ever had. Next to it is a chocolate bouchon from Bouchon's Bakery in Yountville. This tiny morsel was $2! And a sample of a 'best' product? It was essentially a fancy shaped brownie bite.

The Texas BBQ brisket and beef sausage up above was from Southside BBQ from Elgin, Texas. I really liked the sausage and the brisket was well cooked. Where they failed was in their sauces. Boring and thin. But then, Texas BBQ is always more about smoking then about the sauces. And I do tend to favor Memphis or Carolina BBQ over Texan.

So....

This could be a great event. My overall thoughts:

- Work on the whole wristband vs. cash vs. ticket system for paying for your food and drink.
- Bigger venue. If this was the first year and the place was that jammed, you need someplace bigger.
- More and better food specialties from around the country. There were 15 featured places this time around and there's certainly opportunity for another dozen or more.
- Improve the marketplace and try to feature more local, just starting entrepreneurs. What a great opportunity to get their product known!
- Go green! Use paper based products for serving the food, not the plastic.

I'm sure there will be more thoughts I'll come up with later. Will they do it again? I think they saw today that people wanted such an event. It just needs to be bigger, better, and run smoothly.

A couple posts ago I told about my excursion to IFly in Union City for indoor skydiving. But about seven years ago I did do actual skydiving, although in a tandem. Here is my recollection of that experience and then a discussion as to which I preferred.

First of all, I'm afraid of heights. So I had the idea that maybe going skydiving would help with this fear. Then the opportunity arose to do it.

Below is a picture of Cindy, Dawn, and myself. Dawn, at the time, was supervising a unit at work where she had issued a challenge. If they met a quota then she would take "a flying leap". It was agreed upon that anyone else that joined her, the quota would be increased. Since I wanted to do a skydive sometime it seemed like this was the perfect opportunity.


We headed to the Lodi airport where there is a large skydiving group. It costs $100 for a tandem jump. I paid extra to get the DVD and photos. You can see my skydiving video on You Tube HERE.

I will admit that I had an out-of-body experience from the time they opened the plane door at 13,000 feet til the instance I felt my stomach drop after we left the plane. Very wierd. I think it was because I had no control, my tandem diver did. Certainly there was no way I would have willingly walked up to the door and jumped on my own!

The fall wasn't that bad after the stomach drop. What I remember most was trying to smile for the camera. Bad idea. The wind wipes out any bit of moisture in your mouth and you've got the worst cotton mouth imaginable. Keep your mouth closed! The fall is about 30 seconds and then the chute is pulled. The floating down on the shoot was actually worse for me than the fall. I get motion sick and so the floating side to side and turning made me queasy.

Upon landing everyone has the biggest grin possible. You are so happy to be on land! Last summer my dad wanted to do it at the age of 75. He went with Dean since I had no desire to go again.



My overall impression of skydiving was to compare it to childbirth. Think about it. Giving birth naturally is a stressful, painful experience. So much so that, at the time, the woman swears she'll never do it again. After several months or years, the bad memories fade to such an extent that she's willing to go through it again for another child.

That's how I feel about skydiving. I figured it would take several years for me forget the scariness of it to be willing to do it again. I wasn't ready to go with dad last summer, but perhaps I'll be ready to do it again in the future - with the right person(s) or in a really cool location.

So...comparing the indoor versus the real skydiving? I liked the indoor better and not just because you are still on land and in no danger of dying. I liked the freedom of it better. During a tandem skydive you are strapped to an instructor and just fall and float. For the indoor skydiving you have NOTHING attached to you and so you really are floating freely. You can also learn to do tricks in the wind tunnel. Sure you can do tricks with real skydiving, but that requires you to go through the entire skydive training program to get certified (or whatever). Since I have no desire to jump from planes on a regular basis, the indoor version suits me much better.


Click here for more stories like this: Fun Things to Do 

A few years ago I tried a tandem skydive and I'll blog about that later. This weekend, though, I went for indoor skydiving at IFly in Union City. This is the type where there is a giant wind tunnel that blows air at about 100 mph so that you lift up.

I went with a Meetup group that consisted of nine people. We were able to get a half hour block for our group alone. The cost for a first timer group rate was $55. We had arrived about an hour early because the drive to the Bay area was pretty smooth. After checking in and signing our waivers, we went upstairs to the observation deck to watch others fly.

At noon our group was called into Jump School. We watched a short instructional video that showed us the hand signals we would need to know for positioning in the tunnel. Then each of us got onto the table to practice form and reading the hand signals from our instructor, Ryan. Here is Marla on the table.



Next stop was the outfitting area where we were each given earplugs, goggles, a helmet, and a jumpsuit. You were required to take off all jewelry and had to have lace up sneakers. Finally it was our turn into the chamber.


They take you through in a rotation. You get a little over a minute your first time where you get your first taste of how to position yourself. Some people are naturals. Others take a lot of help from the instructor who is acting as your spotter.



The second time you get another minute and hopefully get into position quickly and without much help. If you do, then the instructor might help you learn to turn or control going up and down. If you are lucky, he'll hold on to you and you will spin up to the top of the chamber as a a linked couple.


When we had all finished our second rotation Ryan entered the tunnel, the wind was turned up to 150 mph, and he showed off doing all kinds of tricks like spinning and somersaults.

We were told that repeat flyers get discounted rates. You can also buy blocks of time. For instance, a full half hour all to yourself would be $450. Or you could share that block with others, maybe three friends, so that you divide up that half hour and get more minutes each. As you get better they will eventually teach you tricks.

Oh, and you can take children as young as three years old!

What a fun day. I preferred this to my real tandem skydive. I'll write about that next. Meanwhile, consider IFly for a party or special occasion. It's not outrageously priced and it IS fun.


Click here for more stories like this: Fun Things to Do 

My father worked as an engineer in Saudi Arabia in the 70's and 80's. The company was ARAMCO, the Arabian American Oil Company. Now the owndership has transferred to the Saudis and so it is known as Saudi Aramco. Any child that went to school over there is known as an ARAMCO Brat.

I went from 1st to 9th grade in the ARAMCO schools. After we graduated 9th grade we all went to boarding schools. I was lucky in that I got to live in the three main American compounds there: Ras Tanura, Abqaiq, and Dhahran.

Every odd number year (2009) we hold a Brat reunion over Memorial Day weekend. I've been to five so far - two in Houston, Tucson, Chandler, and now Los Angeles. Any Brat may attend and so that means we have people from the class of 1950 or so up to the present. The gatherings are large and festive. We take over a hotel and party for four days straight. There is very little sleep and anyone who is unfortunate to have booked a room in the same hotel while we are there is very, very sorry. We've been known to consume every ounce of liquor in a hotel and the parties go on all through the night til dawn and later.


Because I lived in the three districts I have volunteered to rep for the class of 1980. This particular year I saw mostly Ras Tanura brats. My roommate for the weekend was Rihab, who I had not seen since 4th grade! Same time for not seeing Roula as well.


Most brats just hang out at the pool all day since this is what we usually did back in Saudi as kids. We catch up, see how people look today, meet spouses and children. There are bowling and golf tournaments, auctions, raffles, banquets, a suq (marketplace), class pictures, and a recreated Teen Canteen (hangout). Nothing but fun and exhaustion.



So now we just wait for the announcement of 2011's reunion!