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

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!!!

Warm Farro Salad with RayZyn’s

December 31, 2016 by Mary 22 Comments

Imagine raisins that have more antioxidants than wine!! Not that I’m giving up my wine but we could always use more antioxidants to combat all the diseases out there. These Wine RayZyn’s are a crunchy superfood in three flavors – ChardonayZyn, MerlayZyn, and CabernayZyn are really simply dried wine grapes. If you got our MARY’s secret ingredients winter box, you received two of the three flavors.

They’re delicious and super crunchy. A little different than you’d expect, the crunch comes from the seeds and the seeds have more antioxidants than the rest of the dried grape, so crunch away!!

I made this warm farro salad with the RayZyns, (any flavor will work), some sautéed onions and radishes. I’m calling this a salad because of the radishes but believe me, this was delicious and comforting, even on a cold winter night. Finishing it with the sherry vinegar adds just the right amount of acid to tie the sweet, from the RayZyns, with the savory, from the onions and radishes, together, while the lovely farro adds its own soft chewy texture. The butter at the end is a good addition as well, to tie it all together.

And don’t worry about serving this warm salad to your kids, there’s no alcohol in these RayZyn’s and they’re non GMO, all natural, and vegan!

Make this to go with any protein. You’ll be delighted.

WARM FARRO SALAD WITH RAYZYN’S – serves 4

1 cup farro
1 tsp. coarse sea salt
3 cups water
2 Tbs. olive oil, divided
1 small onion or shallot, minced
1 anchovy fillet, drained and patted dry
1 Tbs. unsalted butter
3 radishes, chopped
1/2 cup RayZyns, any flavor, finely chopped
Fine grind sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
1 Tbs. sherry vinegar

Warm farro salad with RayZyn's ingredients on a wooden cutting board. Combine farro, water and 1 tsp. coarse sea salt in a small pot. Being to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Test after 15 minutes. The texture of the farro should be tender and chewy, a little al dente. And the farro should always be covered with water while cooking. This will take 15 – 30 minutes of cooking time.

Meanwhile, as the farro is cooking, in a small skillet, warm 1 Tbs. olive oil on low heat and add the minced onion or shallot and the anchovy. Cover and let cook on low heat for 10 minutes to soften and sweeten the onion, and melt the anchovy, stirring occasionally.

Uncover and add the chopped radishes and cook for just 3 minutes on medium high heat. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the 1 Tbs. of butter. Swirl it around to melt the butter off heat, but keep the skillet in a warm place.

Finely chopped RayZyn's with three radishes on a cutting board. Finely chop the RayZyn’s, any flavor will be delicious.

Drain the farro when done. Shake the colander and stir the grains to remove any extra water. Lay the farro out on one-half of a clean linen or cotton towel and cover with the other half of the towel to mop up any extra water from the farro.

In a warm bowl, combine the farro, the radishes and onion mixture, the finely chopped RayZyns, plus 1 Tbs. good olive oil and sprinkle the sherry vinegar over all. Toss to combine well and taste for salt and pepper. It may not need any salt.

Serve immediately, with LOVE!

Arugula, Roasted Beets and Scallion Salad – It’s all about the ingredients!

June 25, 2016 by Mary 24 Comments

I have said this many times and the French know it all too well – it’s all about the ingredients. The quality of the items you are working with to create your dish makes all the difference in the world. This arugula, roasted beets and scallion salad I made of “just picked that morning” produce was so simple, so delicious, it was to die for. I topped it with a fresh lemon juice dressing and it was a dancing fresh, total yum feel in your mouth. It doesn’t get much better than that!!

On our way up to the Hudson Valley yesterday, we were finally early enough to make it to the Farmer’s Market in Milan and Ethel of Red Hook Farm had just picked the arugula and pulled the beets in the morning. I am so tired of store bought arugula that has zero flavor, aren’t you? Those boxes of baby arugula look all pretty and nice but really, they are tasteless.

This arugula was the big leaf variety, light in texture and full of peppery punch, just the way arugula should be! Because the texture was so light, you could eat a lot of these luscious leaves. The beets grew long and skinny, as opposed to round huge things, so they roasted quickly in 40 minutes at 425 degrees. And the scallions were a bright spring onion flavor. All so fresh, so simple, so delicious, the way all food should be.

“It’s all about the ingredients” is exactly what we do with our MARY’s secret ingredients culinary boxes. We search the world for delicious simple healthy ingredients and products to make your cooking and eating spectacular and easy. All products are shelf stable, natural and good for you, and add that extra punch to make an ordinary meal extraordinary. Take this simple chicken breast recipe – with the addition of a little buttermilk marinating time, fresh rosemary, good quality grainy mustard and this Just Jan’s Tangerine Marmalade, you’ve got yourself a “company meal.” The Tangerine Marmalade was in our recent spring box.

The summer box is scheduled to ship out next week so place your order this weekend. Our surprise collection of completely new products will wow you, I guarantee. We have some super fun and delicious items in this box. Our belief of “it’s all about the ingredients” means that every one has to pass not only our taste test, but also our “good for your body” test, meaning made with all natural ingredients, nothing unpronounceable can ever be included. So order one now and get on the bandwagon to eat healthy delicious meals you can make at home simply and easily, and also help us in our mission to fight global hunger as we are a proud supporter of the worldwide organization, Feed The Children.

Now the rest of my meal yesterday sucked! I decided to try something new and…it didn’t work. 🙁 So I had some lamb cubes and a craving for pasta. With the grill here, I thought it would be interesting to brown the salted and peppered lamb on the grill – on a grill pan – make the tomato sauce on the stove top and then simmer the cubes in the sauce. Only I think I needed like 3 hours of simmer time to get those babies tender. I thought these were leg of lamb cubes but nope, it was lamb cubes for stew. To make things further worse, all I had here was white rice pasta – a pretty yucky combo with the tough meat.

Oh well, but the salad was magnificent!

Here’s what I did:

ARUGULA, ROASTED BEETS AND SCALLION SALAD – serves 2

2 bunches of farmstand large leaf arugula, trimmed, washed, spun dry and chilled
5 small beets, trimmed and scrubbed
1 Tbs. olive oil
3 scallions, white and light green parts, sliced

DRESSING:

½ tsp Dijon mustard
2 Tbs. lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place beets in the middle of a sheet of aluminum foil. Drizzle with 1 Tbs. olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Close up foil tightly to make a neat packet and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes until beets are tender and easily pierced with paring knife. Let cool a bit so you can handle and peel. Slice into ¼” slices.

For the dressing, whisk together the lemon juice and mustard. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in the olive oil in a slow steady stream to emulsify.

Toss together the arugula, beets and scallions. Drizzle on the salad dressing, just enough for your taste. Toss everything well and serve with LOVE.

Enjoy!

And buy a box! 🙂 They make awesome hostess and housewarming gifts. Everyone loves them!!

Roasted Sea Bass on a Radicchio Salad with Sugar Snap Peas & Apple

June 19, 2016 by Mary 18 Comments

With my mother-in-law’s passing, the inevitable clean up and division of “stuff” is happening. My husband and oldest son went back down to Baltimore this past week to pitch in and help Steve’s sister with the work of emptying her condo. Needing to leave early on Wednesday morning, our son came to our apartment to spend the night on Tuesday. Steve and I had several business networking events that evening so he offered to cook dinner.

Well we arrived home to a DINNER!!! A gourmet dinner and combination – this Roasted Sea Bass on a Radicchio Salad with Sugar Snap Peas & Apple – that I would have never thought of. He is fearless, creative and brilliant in his cooking and combinations. He is, I think, a better cook than me. Okay. That. Was. Hard. To say.

I had some sea bass fillets in the fridge and he found a head of radicchio, a bunch of herbs – parsley, cilantro, mint and dill, part of a jalapeño, some sugar snap peas and a Jazz apple. He made a beautiful salad of the radicchio, thinly sliced apple, a little fresh jalapeño, par boiled sugar snap peas and herbs with a lemon, olive oil, mustard, and worcestershire sauce dressing and the fish was marinating in a lemon, olive oil, herb mixture. He felt my refrigerator needed cleaning out so he went to work using things up.

When would I dream my son would chastise me on the condition of my vegetable drawers?

Never.

But it’s all good! And, he was right.

So the fish fillets, with the herb marinade piled on top, roasted in 425 degree oven for close to 20 minutes. Did you ever notice that sea bass fillets really expand and puff up in thickness, so the roasting takes longer than you would expect?

But then he did something unexpected, because he wanted the herbs to be crispy. When finished roasting, he flash broiled the fillets and got those herbs to have a nice crunch! I wouldn’t have thought of that. And, he served the fish on top of a big pile of the salad. Total delish!! And beautiful!

So I don’t really have his recipe but what I’ve outlined here is what he told me he did and here’s a picture of his delicious dish.

To all you young mothers out there, cook delicious meals, let your children see you do it, have them help. Then you too will reap the rewards later and have dinners like this cooked for you!! What goes around comes around. Do it with LOVE and you will be rewarded.

I can’t wait to see what he and his fiancée will cook up tonight for Steve’s Father’s Day Dinner.

Happy Father’s Day to all you wonderful dads out there!!! Have an awesome day!

Frosty cocktails and dinner salads – summertime is here!

June 6, 2016 by Mary 8 Comments

Frosty cocktails and dinner salads, summertime is here, right? Easy cooking and meals that come together quickly, that’s what we all want when it’s time to open the windows wide, as we’d really rather be outside.

My mother-in-law passed early Tuesday morning. We had the funeral in Baltimore on Thursday. She had lived a good long 96+ years. So on Wednesday night, our oldest son and his fiancée came over for dinner and spent the night so we could all drive to Baltimore together. Obviously I had not planned for four for dinner this week but here’s what I threw together. It was great for a hot summer, late night meal.

Fortunately I had defrosted a package of 4 chicken thighs with bone and skin. I had some baby spinach and romaine lettuce, potatoes, mini sweet peppers, radishes and tomatoes. I threw in some caperberries and lemon halves to roast with the potatoes and chicken. Over the finished salad, I drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil and with a squeeze of the roasted lemons – DELISH!!

The caperberries got crunchy – a nice and interesting little bit of salt crunch every once in a while. The potatoes, baby Yukon Gold, were creamy dreamy. And roasting the lemons at the high heat of 425 degrees made them almost sweet! You can just salt and pepper your chicken on both sides but I was also trying out a new possible product for the summer box, delicious and high in garlic content, so I will tell you to just add some garlic powder and sesame seeds on the thighs, in order to not ruin the surprise of this product in the upcoming summer box.

Here’s what I did.

DINNER SALAD WITH ROASTED CHICKEN THIGHS, CAPERBERRIES AND ROASTED LEMONS – serves 4

4 chicken thighs with bone and skin
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder
Sesame seeds
5.5 oz. baby spinach leaves
3 – 4 romaine lettuce leaves, washed, dried and torn into bite size pieces
1.75 lbs. baby Yukon Gold potatoes – scrubbed, dried and cut into 2“ chunks
2 Tbs. olive oil, plus more to drizzle on finished salads
1/3 cup caperberries, drained
2 whole lemons, washed, dried and cut in half
8 radishes, scrubbed clean and dried, trim if greens are not nice
½ cup sugar snap peas, washed, strings removed, and cut on a diagonal into slices
3 tomatoes, washed, dried and each cut into 8 wedges
4 small sweet peppers – yellow, orange or red, washed, dried, split in half lengthwise, seeds removed
3 scallions, cleaned and sliced, white, light green and some dark green parts
Maldon salt
Fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Toss potatoes with 2 Tbs. olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast potatoes in the oven for 15 minutes. Then add the caperberries to the potatoes and toss and return to the oven for 20 – 30 minutes more.

Meanwhile, wash and dry chicken thighs, removing all fat and extra skin on the edges. Season both sides with salt, pepper, garlic powder and sesame seeds, pressing them in to adhere. Place thighs on a rack on a rimmed baking sheet, add lemon halves in the corners of the baking sheet, cut side down and roast on the top shelf in the oven for 30 – 40 minutes.

Prepare all the other vegetables.

Distribute the spinach and romaine lettuce leaves evenly among four dinner plates. Place chicken thighs in the center and evenly distribute all the other vegetables around the chicken, putting one roasted lemon half on each plate and finishing with the scallions sprinkled all over. Drizzle olive oil on the vegetables in a circle around the chicken, and squeeze the lemon all around. Finish with some crushed Maldon salt and fresh ground pepper.

Serve with LOVE and enjoy!! We paired this with an Alsace Riesling – perfect! (Steve – what do you think?)

Last weekend, I was also playing around with cocktails and another box item. More on that to come later after the summer box is shipped on June 25th. Here’s a photo to whet your appetite.

Barbecued Ribs or Santorini Grilled Chicken?

May 29, 2016 by Mary 12 Comments

BBQ ribs – perfect for this holiday weekend. Those are fiddlehead ferns garnishing the platter – they’re in season now!

If you’re thinking of ribs for today or tomorrow, I’ve got you covered with my great rib recipe here. People rave about this recipe and it’s so simple and easy. Or if pork is not your thing, how about a Santorini Grilled Chicken recipe that’s sure to please everyone as it’s stuffed with tomatoes, cheese and onions and oregano. And I’ve added on for you some salads too – one tomato and two potato. So fire up the grill, whip up the salads and enjoy this lovely long weekend with your family – and don’t forget to thank our fallen heroes for their service to our country, as that is what Memorial Day is all about.

Here’s a shot of my Dad’s cavalry hat from WWII. We proudly display it on the wall as a piece of art. (That pie in the back gives a hint of one of our products coming up in our summer box!)

These recipes are all reprise recipes so I’ll just show you the pictures, which all link back to the original post.

We are all out of sorts today. My mother-in-law is passing. She is 96 years old, almost 97, in August. She lived a good long life. I’ve dealt with a lot of passing of people close to me. My mom passed in 1995, my dad in ’98 (of a broken heart from losing my mom. He always thought he would go first.), and then we lost a brother to MS in 2000. All of these were sudden events and a surprise. This, with Steve’s mom is maddening. His sister is in Baltimore with her and has called in hospice. We are both on pins and needles.

Today I spent an hour tearing through the house looking for my reading glasses and then I went to wash my hands in the bathroom and looked up in the mirror – there they were on my chest – hanging from my necklace. Hope this isn’t a sign of things to come! Once I left my car keys at a greeting card store and then they closed and I couldn’t drive home! I was so engrossed in reading funny cards and laughing so hard, I got comfortable, sat on the carpeted floor and left my keys there too. That was a tough one to retrace. Then there was the time I left my keys in the freezer. Don’t ask.

Love your family more. Our time here is precious. Cook with abandon and always serve with LOVE!

Santorini Grilled Chicken

Greek Salad, salad with feta cheese tomatoes cucumbers greek

Tomato, cucumber and feta Greek salad

Best potato salad with fennel, parmigiano cheese, cippolini onions and piccholine olives.

Midwest potato salad in a white Le Crueset bowl garnished with parsley.

Or here’s a great mayonnaise-based potato salad – my Midwest Potato Salad – that was featured in the Tanglewood Cookbook!