For the Love of Food

Back in April, For the Love of Food was nominated for Best Food Blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards. Since then, For the Love of Food has a new home under a new domain name: http://forfood.rezimo.com . Because of the new URL, I have had to resubmit the site since the URL cannot be changed once it has been submitted.

So, vote it up!

The latest harvest from my garden plot – purple beans!

I was a bit disappointed when I steamed them and they lost all their color and turned to green beans…such a shame, I was really looking forward to having purple beans.

Ahh, chocolate! And, for those of use who cannot afford (with our health) to eat sugar, what do we do?? Before you go out and buy some gross-tasting chocolate with artificial sweeteners in it, try this recipe. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons of Cocoa powder
3 Tablespoons of Agave Nectar
6 Tablespoons of Heavy Cream
1 teaspoon of Vanilla Extract (make sure it is sugar-free..that includes high fructose corn syrup too!)
250 grams of Butter (I would have used cocoa butter, but I was unable to find some)

Directions:
In a pot, start melting half of the amount of butter (125 grams) over low heat – do not let boil. Let the other half of the butter sit out on the counter so that it becomes soft – for later use. In the mean time, in a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder and cream, one tablespoon at a time, until it has formed a thick paste. Once the butter has completely melted, stir in the chocolate mixture until it has completely dissolved into the butter (aka – no clumps). Then, stir in the agave nectar and vanilla extract. Once the mixture has mixed, remove it from heat and let it cool while you continue to work.
Place the second half of room temperature-soft butter into a mixing bowl that attaches to your mixer (if you don’t have a mixer, you can do this buy hand, just make sure that you mix it well or you will end up with clumps of butter). Mix the soft butter with the chocolate-butter mixture and beat until it has completely mixed together and there are no white butter chunks left in sight. Then, pour out into a tupperware container and refrigerate.
The chocolate will harden to the original consistency of butter. You can also pour the warm mixture into little forms or drop little dots on some wax paper to make individual candies or chocolate chips. I think it would also go well as a frosting on a cake. I was originally going to try that, but I got to impatient and really excited and just ate it on bread.

To all my sugar-free brethren out there – enjoy!

This is a great summer sandwich that you can put together from your garden (plus ham, cheese, and bread of course!).

Make this sandwich as large or as small as you would like.
Ingredients:
French bread, cit in half
Yellow Mustard
Pumpkin Seed Oil
fresh Basil leaves
fresh dill sprigs
fresh Roquette leaves
a few slices of Ham
a few slices of Emmentaler (Swiss cheese)
a few slices of Tomato

Directions:
Spread one slice of bread with mustard and the other slice with pumpkin seed oil – if you don’t have pumpkin seed oil, you may also use olive oil or leave the oil out all together. Then, pile on all your other ingredients and enjoy!

For a more vegetarian friendly version, omit the ham and Entmentaler, and use some fresh water-packed mozzarella cheese cut into slices.

I tried something new on ribs the other day – Balsamic Vinegar cooked with bacon. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much balsamic flavor in the end. I think I will try again next week and adjust my ingredients. Once I come up with a good recipe, I’ll share!

To help handle the ever increasing demand, we’ve moved For the Love of Food to a new hosting provider, no more hosting over our DSL connection.

The new address is http://forfood.rezimo.com. The old address will continue to redirect for a while still, but its still a good idea to update your bookmarks.
If you spot any problems do let us know.
-Jacob

Well we had a server outage of almost 24 hours. It went out last night here in Europe, and we didn’t notice until midday.

Turns out the some of the capacitors on the main board have swollen and will need to be replaced. You can barely tell in the photo, but basically all of the black orange striped capacitors (cylinder shaped things) are swollen at the top. Never fear though, Nicole has offered up her main computer to keep the site running until the new capacitors arrive next week.

As my wife’s system admin I apologize for any inconveince.

-Jacob

Well, not exactly. Since I’m still breast feeding my baby, I don’t want to drink any alcohol. So, I put this great drink together. I rubbed the rim of the glass with a lime and dipped it in margarita salt. I then filled the glass with some ice, squeezed in the juice of a few limes, and topped it off with some cold alcohol-free Kulmbacher (my favorite alcohol-free beer).

It was really great and refreshing. Unfortunately, it’s not a margarita, but it will do for the next few months of summer!

Just wanted to share the latest harvest from my garden as it grows!

pictured: green onions, Italian parsley, dill, roquette, lose leaf lettuce, and raspberries.

That’s right – Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato on a nice juicy Steak! And, you don’t even have to have a grill!
I chose this recipe from an old Better Homes & Gardens special issue that my mom gave me. Then, my husband was kind enough to make it for dinner. Oh, it was so delicious! In many ways, it reminded me of eating ribs at Tony Roma’s…which gave me some ideas for my next BBQ sauce for ribs.

Ingredients:
2 12-oz Steaks
Rosemary
Garlic
Salt
Pepper
1 teaspoon of diced fresh Thyme, minced
1/4 teaspoon of grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 Cup of Balsamic vinegar (with only 6% acidity)
2 teaspoons of Forest Herb Oil
8 slices of Bacon
1 large Heirloom Tomato, sliced
2 leaves of “Red Salad Bowl” Lettuce

Directions:
Season the steaks ahead of time with rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper (sorry, I don’t know how much of any of them, so just use good reason). In a grill pan, cook steaks on high heat for 7 minutes each side. In the mean time, cook the bacon in a pan on medium-low heat until crisp. The lower temperature will keep you from burning the bacon as easily.

Prepare a balsamic vinaigrette by combining the thyme, Parmesan, salt, and pepper with the balsamic vinegar and oil. Pour the vinaigrette over the bacon. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 1 minute.

To serve, Place a steak on a plate, layer it with a strip of bacon, 1 slice of tomato, and 1 leaf of lettuce and drizzle with the cooked vinaigrette.

Serves 4 (in theory you are supposed to halve the steaks, but it was so yummy that we ate them all – so, for us, it made 2 Servings).