Sunday, February 06, 2011

Super Bowl Menu


Today’s menu started with some grass fed beef in order to make a family recipe we call, “Grandma’s Sloppy Joe’s”. What’s great about this recipe is that there aren’t any seasoning mixes in there, just a few simple ingredients. One thing that is really important to me is knowing what’s in my food. I tend to make most of my food and rarely purchase any processed food. This takes more time but it definitely worthwhile. Not only do I avoid the chemicals in the food, but I avoid the excess packaging and I get better tasting food.


One of the first things I do on a day when I am eating things out of the ordinary, or heavier foods like sloppy joe’s and onion rings, is to start my day with a green spinach smoothie. The smoothie helps me get in six servings of fruits and vegetables for the day. My green smoothies include four cups of organic spinach, one organic banana and one half cup of organic strawberries or some kind of organic berries.
The first part was making homemade poppy seeds buns. I use a recipe from a bread making book for the hamburger buns then mix the dough using the dough setting on my Zojirushi bread machine. After nearly two hours, the dough is done. Once that has completed, I remove the dough, punch it down and let it rise again. Once that happens, I’ll cut the dough with a dough cutter, then mold it into buns. Next, it will rise for another hour. After that, I’ll mix up an egg white wash, made with my favorite organic eggs from Vital Farms. Vital Farms eggs are pasture raised eggs and humanely raise their chickens. In addition to that, they are by far the best tasting eggs I have ever had. I use that for an egg wash and then followed it up with some poppy seeds on top. Normally I like to use golden flaxseed on top but I was out so I used the poppy seeds instead. I baked them in my Breville Smart Oven which is a toaster/convection oven. What I love about this oven is it’s small size. It’s great for one or two people and more importantly, it takes up less space, uses less energy than heating up a full size oven and it’s much easier to clean. I call it my Easy Bake Oven, lol. Here they are all baked.

Once the buns were in process, I started on the recipe for Sloppy Joe’s. I started using some grass fed beef. I can’t afford to purchase all organic food but I am selective on what I do purchase. This is a family recipe which uses only a few ingredients. I love that.

Once the ground sirloin is cooked, it's added to the slow cooker with a few other ingredients and then placed on low for all of the flavors to meld together. Next are the onion rings. I choose oven baked onion rings to go with the sloppy joe’s. I like onion rings but am not too excited about frying anything. If you eat fried foods in a restaurant, they often reuse the oil, which can be toxic once it’s reheated. If you make it at home in those electric fryers, they are made from plastic which leach BPA into your food. I don’t know about you, but none of that appeals to me. I chose to bake mine. They are fairly simple to make. I started with an organic sweet onion, sliced it up, dredged it in a flour salt and pepper mixture, dipped it in an egg white wash, then dipped them in some home made bread crumbs. If you are making your own bread, it’s pretty simple to take a slice or two and chop it into bread crumbs in your food processor. It’s amazing how much more flavor you have when you make your own bread crumbs.Once those are baked, then comes the easy part. Putting it all together and enjoy it. I hope you enjoyed my Super Bowl Menu. Coming in the next few weeks will be my kitchen reveal. I ordered a few more things this weekend so I am just waiting for everything to arrive. In the meantime, you can check out other kitchen products that I like by clicking here or just clicking on the store button at the top of the blog. Once you open that link, it will list the kitchen products that I recommend with some reasons as to why I think they are superior to other products.

No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Blog Archive

StatCounter