Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Buttermilk Challah French Toast

March 30, 2017 by Mary 7 Comments

I love French toast! It’s even better than pancakes for me. Did you know that this past Saturday was National Waffle Day? Me neither, until our totally on-the-ball, wonderful marketing associate, Abby, at MARY’s secret ingredients pointed it out, and that made me think of making French Toast too. But then I thought, how could I make French Toast even better? And I came up with this Buttermilk Challah French Toast recipe – and it was totally yummy!!

It’s less sweet. It sort of tastes like French Toast coated with crème fraiche. It’s a subtle sophisticated difference, but I really liked it. And it’s a whole lot better for you too as buttermilk is considerably lower in calories and fat content but high in calcium, Vitamin B12 and potassium as compared to regular milk. One cup of buttermilk may contain up to 99 calories while milk may contain up to 157 calories. Also, one cup of buttermilk typically has 2.2 grams of fat while the same amount of milk gives you 9 grams of fat. So there!

What makes your French Toast work?

I remember once being on location for a catalog and advertising photo shoot for several days and our crew of five folks spent three days together shooting slippers. Yes, slippers, for Dearfoams, and at one breakfast at the local diner, they had French Toast, but no powdered sugar in the kitchen. Bradley, the photographer looked at me and said, “So you need that to make it work for you?”

I thought that was such a funny yet very true way to put it.

And yes, I do need confectioner’s sugar with a tiny bit a melted butter, to make my French Toast work for me. Ever since I started eating leftover dinners, sliced turkey or only eggs for breakfast, as I need a lot of protein, I rarely make these sweet things. So it’s a good thing we had the sugar on hand, while my husband prefers maple syrup.

Here you go with this super simple recipe. Since there were only two of us, after I made it on Saturday and used just half of the batter, I covered the pie plate with Saran wrap and refrigerated it. The next morning on Sunday, I took the batter out and let it warm up at room temperature for about 20 minutes and then started soaking bread slices again to make a fresh batch of Buttermilk Challah French Toast. This was a way cool, super fast breakfast the second time around. And, it was just as good!!

Make with LOVE.

BUTTERMILK CHALLAH FRENCH TOAST – serves 4

1 loaf of challah bread
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup of real buttermilk (I use Kate’s)
Pinch of French grey or Kosher salt
1 Tbs. vanilla extract
¾ tsp. ground cinnamon
1 Tbs. unsalted butter

Slice the challah into generous ½” slices. Lightly beat eggs in a Pyrex pie plate. Add buttermilk, salt, vanilla and cinnamon and whisk to combine thoroughly.

Soak the bread slices in the egg buttermilk mixture, turning over several times to coat thoroughly.

Heat the butter in a large skillet until sizzling. Add dipped bread slices. Brown on each side for 2 – 3 minutes on medium-high heat. Watch it so it doesn’t brown too quickly because the inside needs to cook as well. You may need to add more butter to the skillet.

Serve with pure warmed maple syrup or a tiny swish of butter and powdered sugar.

Tuna Salad Sandwiches with Holy Schmitt’s Mustard Horseradish

March 22, 2017 by Mary 4 Comments

Tuna Salad is common enough, basic enough and simple enough, so why do you need a recipe? Because, this Tuna Salad is made with Holy Schmitt’s Mustard Horseradish and it is DELICIOUS!!

Take something as mundane as tuna salad and infuse it with life with this Holy Schmitt’s Mustard Horseradish and WOW!! It’s true, a few tablespoons of this and real flavor abounds. Besides, it’s healthy for you because horseradish is a true superfood, not to mention a sinus-clearing device. Chase the winter blues away, welcome spring and make this for lunch soon.

Because Matt Schmitt, a 4th generation Long Island farmer, plants the horseradish, nurtures it, knows that there are no chemicals to fertilize it, so it’s totally non-GMO and organic, harvests the root, scrubs them clean, peels them and grates them in his own converted garage/commercial kitchen, your can trust that this is pure stuff, the real deal.

I like a little hard-boiled egg in my salad. I think it adds some creaminess. You could leave it out if you’d like but I recommend it.

You know horseradish is a staple in all Slavic countries, where it’s cold and root vegetables rule. Horseradish is known to suppress the growth of tumors, has significant amounts of cancer-fighting compounds called glucosinolates and is chock full of iron, magnesium, calcium and anti-stress B vitamins. But you don’t even need to know all of those benefits – you just need to know it’s DELICIOUS!!

TUNA SALAD SANDWICHES WITH HOLY SCHMITT’S MUSTARD HORSERADISH – serves 4

2 cans, 5 oz. each, solid white tuna packed in water, drained and carefully flaked
1 hard boiled egg, chopped
¼ cup (scant) minced onions
5 Tbs. minced celery
4 Tbs. Holy Schmitt’s Mustard Horseradish
5 Tbs. mayonnaise
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
2 plum tomatoes, sliced
2 handfuls of baby spinach leaves, washed and air dried
8 slices of mutli-grain bread, toasted

Combine first 8 ingredients and fold together to combine. I really don’t like it when people mash up canned or jarred tuna. Fold it together with a rubber spatula so you will still have nice chunks of tuna.

Make your sandwich. Lay ½ handful of baby spinach leaves on one side of toasted bread. Put one quarter of the horseradish tuna salad on top, spreading evenly. Lay on top 3 slices of tomato. Top with other slice of bread. Cut in half. (My mother used to always cut diagonally – then my oldest son insisted on that for his school lunches – I did not do that here – sorry Mom.)

Dig in and ENJOY!!

Be the best tuna salad you ever had!

Going Through Everything – and Quick Pasta with a Sweet Sausage Bolognese

March 16, 2017 by Mary 4 Comments

This office move of going through everything after being in business for 38 years has been massive, to say the least. What a tumult of emotions I have been through! I found files where I had saved many keepsakes and thank you notes. I had no idea I had entertained so many people for lunch over the years, especially when we had our previous office for ten years, where we had a large terrace with a Hudson River view.

It was amazing to me that so many people wrote about it! Gathering around a table with food is what people remember. And the wine parties. And the birthday cakes. But after about 7 or 8 years there, the buildings started growing up all around, leaving us just a sliver of a river to see and creating a wind tunnel down 38^th Street to make it not so nice anymore.

Things change so. They can’t stay the same. And I feel a little like an outsider looking in now when I leave my home office for a meeting. Like I’m not part of the in-crowd work force anymore. Like I’m sneaking around.

My husband wanted to operate like this – virtually from the cloud – five years ago, but I resisted. Now, I pretty much like it. I’ll certainly save on make-up and even soap if I’m not careful because it is easy to roll from bed to desk and back again. But no, we must have some rules and we do have our weekly two meetings with our team members here.

Going through everything has sort made me feel like I’ve died already. You see, I saved all those things, thinking I would go through them right before I died. So I did it now. My friend Margaret said she still wouldn’t have thrown them away but I wanted to save that task from my boys. Lord knows I did it enough with my parents and then with Steve’s. I’m still washing his mother’s tablecloths and napkins from when she passed last May.

So needless to say, our meals have had to be super quick and easy for the weary hungry souls we’ve been. Once again, I have relied on some all natural, very flavorful sweet Italian sausage to give us the boost of flavor you can easily count on, as I did with the one-sheet-pan meal of sausage, potatoes and arugula.

I used a lot of red wine in this sauce, because I had an open bottle on the counter just begging to be put to use and I am in a “get rid of things” kind of mode. And adding the little bit of cream at the end smoothed out the ragged edges of the sauce, along with our emotions.

Make and serve with LOVE!

QUICK PASTA WITH SWEET SAUSAGE BOLOGNESE –serves 5 – 6

2 Tbs. coconut oil (better brain food!)
2 shallots, minced
1 lb. all natural sweet Italian sausages, meat removed from casings
1 28 oz. can of whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes
¾ cup dry red wine
1 ½ tsp. dried Greek oregano
¼ tsp. red chili flakes
Salt to taste – French Grey or Kosher
Pepper – fresh ground to taste
2 Tbs. heavy cream
1 lb. good quality dried pasta (I used Sfoglini from our box!)
Coarse sea salt

Put a large pot of cold water on to boil for your pasta.

Warm the coconut oil over low heat. Add minced shallots and cover to let them sweat and sweeten for 10 minutes.

Uncover and raise heat to medium and add the sausage meat, breaking it up into small pieces, tossing it to brown all over. Once browned, add the tomatoes and their juice to the sausage and shallots, crushing the tomatoes with your hands as you’re adding them. Turn heat to medium-high to bring the sauce to brisk simmer/low boil. Add the wine, oregano, chili flakes and salt and pepper to taste. Stir sauce every so often and keep the brisk simmer/low boil going, along with the stirring. The sauce needs to thicken quite a bit.

When the pasta water comes to a boil, add enough coarse sea salt to make it taste like the ocean. Add your pasta and check at 2 minutes less than the least amount of time they tell you on the package. When pasta is al dente, save some pasta water and drain the pasta.

Your sauce should be thickened by now. Remove from heat and stir in 2 Tbs. of heavy cream. Combine the sauce with the pasta in a warm wide bowl. Add 1 Tbs. pasta water, to help the sauce cling better to the noodles. Toss and serve!

You could add grated cheese but I think it’s not necessary. This dish, with the wine and cream, is nice and rich just by itself. Enjoy!!!

If there are only two of you eating, cook only 8 oz. of pasta and use only half of the sauce. You could then freeze the sauce for another meal later in the month or refrigerate for up to 5 days and cook your pasta fresh again. Always better to have fresh pasta than to rewarm it.

Refreshing Winter Citrus Salad Recipe

March 5, 2017 by Mary 9 Comments

Tis the season for oranges to be plentiful and this Refreshing Winter Citrus Salad Recipe is just the thing to drown out the winter blues, wake up your tastebuds and start thinking about spring!

You know I love blood oranges and Cara Cara’s are so nice too as this salad combines both of them along with pink grapefruit, regular navel oranges, some celery for crunch and young escarole leaves for a touch of bitterness. The oil cured black olives add contrast and just the right amount of extra salt, while the thinly slivered red onions do their thing. This is DELICIOUS!!

We are rounding home stretch of moving and cleaning EVERYTHING out of our offices, reorganizing and repositioning the businesses, coming home dirty and dusty every night for the past week and this salad is just the thing that cleans our bodies and souls up before jumping into the shower and then bed. This is also the reason there has been a pause in my posts.

Of course you don’t have to be dirty and tired to enjoy this salad. It’s crisp and refreshing at any time. Beautiful to look at, with all the colors, it’s a feast for the eyes too. This is the kind of salad that’s so good, you just want to keep shoveling it in and mumbling mmm’s.

Please make sure you peel all of the citrus as described below, with a sharp knife. You don’t want any bitter pith coming in to ruin your dish. Make this now, with LOVE, while all the oranges are plentiful. Enjoy!!!

REFRESHING WINTER CITRUS SALAD RECIPE – serves 3 – 4

4 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. sherry vinegar
Salt and pepper
1 navel orange
2 blood oranges
2 Cara Cara oranges
1 small pink grapefruit
1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced
3 tender inside celery stalks, thinly sliced at an angle
Handful of black oil cured olives
½ small head of escarole, tender inside leaves
Large pinch of flaky Maldon sea salt

Whisk together olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

Wash and spin dry the escarole leaves. Wrap in paper toweling and chill in the refrigerator.

To remove the peel from all of the citrus fruit, use a small serrated or very sharp boning knife. First, cut off a thin slice of peel from the top and bottom of the orange, so it can sit flat on the cutting board. Next, take off the peel, cutting from top to bottom, following the curve of the fruit. Try to remove only the peel and white pith, not the flesh of the fruit. It should end up being perfectly spherical and naked.

Once peeled, carefully slice peeled citrus crosswise. Arrange escarole leaves on a large platter. Arrange all citrus slices in a random pattern on top of the escarole, letting them overlap a bit here and there. Scatter onion and celery over top. Dot the surface with olives.

Whisk vinaigrette again, and spoon evenly over the salad. Sprinkle lightly with flaky salt and serve with LOVE.

Enjoy!!!

Super Quick Sausage, Potato & Arugula Recipe

February 21, 2017 by Mary 20 Comments

We are on total overload moving our offices to be virtual. That translates into getting rid of 38 years worth of sample work, documents, furniture, books and everything, by the end of February. So time is of the essence to me these days and this Super Quick Sausage, Potato & Arugula Recipe has been a real lifesaver for us. It’s speedy to make, beautiful to serve and delicious!

Why this is great! It’s always great to use sausage in a dish as a real time saver because if you can buy really good homemade, all natural Italian sausage, it is already full of herbs, spices and flavor. You could even mix hot and sweet sausage, but in this recipe, I do prefer all sweet. The three different kinds of potatoes add interest in flavor and texture and of course I always love arugula. But try to get the real thing here – the bunches of big leaf arugula – as opposed to the clamshell packages of baby arugula that, to me, really don’t have any flavor any more. I want the real thing, with the spicy bite!

I first made this in January, on the day we had to take Zach to the airport for his flight back to Warsaw. Of course, in my usual bad style, I arrived home late and had planned to make this dish. But it came together so quickly, it didn’t matter that I was late. We still ate in plenty of time and got him to the airport early.

The original recipe was in Food and Wine magazine, but I have changed it, adding a bit more meat and less potatoes. I have also made it exactly like the magazine recipe but I prefer it my way.

SUPER QUICK SAUSAGE, POTATO & ARUGULA RECIPE – serves 4

1 large red potato, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1-inch wedges
1 large baking potato, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
10 medium unpeeled shallots, halved
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
French Grey or Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1 3/4 pounds sweet Italian sausage, cut into 3-inch lengths
One 8-ounce bunch of arugula, stemmed and chopped
1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 425°. On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss all of the potatoes with the shallots and the 1/3 cup of olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Roast for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are lightly browned.

Brush the sausage with olive oil and add to the baking sheet. Roast for 20 to 25 minutes longer, until the potatoes are tender and the sausage is cooked through.

Line a large platter with the arugula. Transfer everything on the baking sheet on top of the arugula. Sprinkle lemon juice over all evenly. Serve with LOVE.

What mark do you want to leave on the world?

February 12, 2017 by Mary 6 Comments

Me?

I want people to eat healthy and feel great. I want them to know what they are putting into their bodies. You can feel vibrant, so alive and excited with the energy to do anything if you eat right, sleep deeply and exercise regularly, allowing you to make your mark in the world. It may take some effort at first but then you will ONLY want to live this way. I don’t eat out very much – I want to know exactly what I’m eating. I take our lunches to work, which are easy, as they’re leftover dinners. That way I know I’m eating clean good wholesome food.

Which brings me to my next big gripe. I think it’s great that there is more interest in food in general with all the food and cooking shows around. However, many of them are promoting fat laden, really rich and unhealthy food. And if you’re not too knowledgeable about food content and calories in general, you wouldn’t know that. So I think the producers of these shows are doing a grave disservice to the general population.

My food and recipes are clean, healthy and good for you. They also taste DELICIOUS. There is no reason why you can’t have it all!!

I have spoken to Food Network producers and they say that healthy food shows, no one will watch. I say take it up a notch and make it just as fun, tasty and exciting, while educating people on the right way to cook and eat.

I am also for promoting that all women’s bodies are different and we can’t all be super thin but to promote being overweight or obese is ok? That’s crazy!!! It is plain unhealthy. I recently saw an ad in the subway for a new TV show called Teachers and 4 out of the 6 girls were overweight. It’s funny, I look at old pictures of relatives who were fat when I was young, and today, with everyone being heavier, they don’t look so fat.

Graham Kerr in his garden at home in Mount Vernon, Wash., last summer. In the 1970s, he lurched from indulgence to a denunciation of excess, but he eventually found his way to a middle ground. Credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Even Galloping Gourmet – the TV chef Graham Kerr from the 70’s – who used to shoot extra fat into already well-marbled prime rib roasts admitted in a recent New York Times article that he was over the top unhealthy with his food. In 1987, his wife (who also produced his show and came up with the idea of leaping over chairs) had a heart attack and a stroke at age 53. Mr. Kerr blamed himself — and his cooking.

The double decker fat-laden burger at Chumley’s restaurant. Credit: Ben Sklar for The New York Times

Just last week, Pete Wells from the New York Times reviewed the newly revived restaurant, Chumley’s in the West Village, which used to be a favorite hangout of mine when I was at Parsons. Then it was cheap good bar food. Now, Pete says, their burger “is like an erotic poem on a theme of fat. It is a double decker, both of its patties buried under American cheese and soaked with bone marrow that’s been hit with a blowtorch. Liquid marrow falls from the burger; so do a few dark and crunchy fried shallots and orange blobs of cheese. On the side are very crisp and skinny fries tossed, after their second trip to the deep fryer, in melted dry-aged beef fat.” Eating the burger painted his face with grease until he looked like Martin Sheen at the end of “Apocalypse Now.”

Is any of this necessary? Come on, I’ll make you a tasty burger any day of the week without all that fat. Food is medicine. Great healthy food can be preventative and curative medicine. I have seen it perform with my husband who slipped and badly hurt his head in the bathroom. He is recovering nicely with natural analgesics and herbs, eating lots of pineapple and blueberries and I have been cooking only with coconut oil.

I want to share with you one of my Christmas presents from our son and his fiancée. It was a collection of handmade soaps and bath bombs, beautifully made and packaged. The outside of the box had all of this script writing on it, in Polish, of course. This is what it says:

I wish you…Silence, because in silence we find that which is lost. Happiness and a ruckus when we feel like dancing and (when we feel like) being among other people. Love, which never ends and gives refuge and the courage to act. Calm dreams. Warmth that warms up the palms and the heart. Vigilance, because it allows us to see the world and people the way they are. Work that allows us to believe in oneself. Gentleness, because it wins people over and brings peace. Friends who understand. Time that would allow us to remember the good moments and would allow us to forget that which we don’t want to remember. A home. Travels. Good whiskey. The right words spoken in the right time. Faith that everything is going to be alright and the hope that maybe it will be even better than that. Wisdom, so that we are able to separate that which is important from that which is trivial. The firmness to reach out for that which is fair. Passion. Normal blood pressure. As much money to make us feel safe. Health, to be able to enjoy all of that.

Close-up shot of handmade soaps and bath bombs.

I love the rosemary in the soap.

I repeat again, I wish you health, to be able to enjoy all of that, and LOVE, which never ends and gives refuge and the courage to act.

May you act to make your mark on the world with LOVE.

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