Weather/Snow ~ Tucker Pendleton ~ Picture of the Day ~ Slow Cookers History ~ Seafood Oscar ~ National Margarita Day

  

Good 32º lots of snow morning. 

 

 

Yesterday our temperature stayed in the 40ºs... started at 43º and then went down and up all day long. We topped with 45º.

 

 

On Monday my grandson Tucker Pendleton was at the airport with his mom Jen and his dad Brian. He was flying out to the Air Force basic training. He joined the Air Force and I think he graduates in June.

 

Picture of the Day....oops, fail.

 

 

Interesting about slow cookers.......

 A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot (after a trademark owned by Sunbeam Products but sometimes used generically in the English-speaking world), is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than other cooking methods, such as baking, boiling, and frying. This facilitates unattended cooking for many hours of dishes that would otherwise be boiled: pot roast, soups, stews and other dishes (including beverages, desserts and dips).

 

History

Slow cookers achieved popularity in the US during the 1940s, when many women began to work outside the home. They could start dinner cooking in the morning before going to work and finish preparing the meal in the evening when they came home.

 

The Naxon Utilities Corporation of Chicago, under the leadership of electrical engineer Irving Naxon (born Irving Nachumsohn), developed the Naxon Beanery All-Purpose Cooker for the purposes of cooking a bean meal. Naxon was inspired by a story from his mother which told how back in her native Lithuanian town, his grandmother made a traditional Jewish stew called cholent which took several hours to cook in an oven. A 1950 advertisement shows a slow cooker called the "Simmer Crock" made by the Industrial Radiant Heat Corp. of Gladstone, NJ.

 

The Rival Company from Sedalia, Missouri, bought Naxon in 1970, acquiring Naxon’s 1940 patent for the bean simmer cooker. Rival asked inventor Robert Glen Martin, from Boonville, Missouri, to develop Naxon’s bean cooker into a large scale production model which could cook an entire family meal, going further than just cooking a bean meal. Martin also designed and produced the mass-production machines for Rival’s manufacturing line of the Crock-Pot. The cooker was then reintroduced under the name "Crock-Pot" in 1971. In 1974, Rival introduced removable stoneware inserts, making the appliance easier to clean. The Crock-Pot brand now belongs to Newell Brands.

 

Other brands of this appliance include Cuisinart, GE, Hamilton Beach, KitchenAid, Magic Chef, West Bend Housewares, and the now defunct American Electric Corporation.

 

A basic slow cooker consists of a lidded round or oval cooking pot made of glazed ceramic or porcelain, surrounded by a housing, usually metal, containing an electric heating element. The lid itself is often made of glass, and seated in a groove in the pot edge; condensed vapor collects in the groove and provides a low-pressure seal to the atmosphere. The contents of a crock pot are effectively at atmospheric pressure, despite the water vapor generated inside the pot. A slow cooker is quite different from a pressure cooker and presents no danger of an abrupt pressure release.

 

To use a slow cooker, the cook places raw food and a liquid, such as stock, water, or wine, in the slow cooker. Some recipes call for pre-heated liquid. The cook puts the lid on the slow cooker and turns it on. Some cookers automatically switch from cooking to warming (maintaining the temperature at 160–165 °F after a fixed time or after the internal temperature of the food, as determined by a probe, reaches a specified value.

 

Heating element heats the contents to a steady temperature in the 174–199 °F range. The contents are enclosed by the crock and the lid, and attain an essentially constant temperature. The vapor that is produced at this temperature condenses on the bottom of the lid and returns as liquid, into which some water-soluble vitamins are leached.

 

From Mr. Food

 

Want to feel like a fancy restaurant chef in a pinch? Our awesome Seafood Oscar can be thrown together easily with a few ingredients we can keep on hand in our freezer. Then whenever company comes calling, we can lure everyone to the table in about 30 minutes. Can't beat that!

 

• 4 (4 to 6-ounce each) frozen tilapia fish fillets
• 1 (8-ounce) bag frozen salad shrimp, slightly thawed and coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup Italian breadcrumbs
• 1 teaspoon chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 (7.5-ounce) box frozen asparagus spears
• 1 (0.9-ounce) packet Hollandaise sauce, prepared according to package directions
• paprika for sprinkling

1. Preheat the oven to 350º. Coat a rimmed baking sheet with cooking spray. Place fish fillets on prepared baking sheet.
    
2. In a medium bowl, combine shrimp, breadcrumbs, parsley, garlic powder, and butter, mix well.
    
3. Top each fish fillet with an equal amount of shrimp mixture then asparagus. Drizzle half the Hollandaise sauce evenly over the asparagus and sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork. Heat remaining Hollandaise sauce on low until hot and serve over fish. 

 

***If tilapia is not your fish-of-choice, go ahead and substitute another white-flesh fish in this recipe. Even if it is, try another fish fillet next time for a variation on this simple and elegant meal.

 

 

 

Historically this date..........

1959 – Lee Petty wins the first Daytona 500.

 

1980 – Miracle on Ice: In Lake Placid, New York, the United States hockey team defeats the Soviet Union hockey

team 4-3.

 

1997 – In Roslin, Scotland, scientists announce that an adult sheep named Dolly has been successfully cloned.

 

 

 

And births this date include...

1732 – George Washington, First President of the United States (d. 1799)

 

1857 – Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell, British soldier, author, and founder of the Scout movement (d. 1941)

 

 

1889 – Olave Baden-Powell, English founder of the Girl Guide (d. 1977)

 

 

1907 – Robert Young, American actor (d. 1998)

 

 

1932 – Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, American politician (d. 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1934 – Sparky Anderson, American baseball manager (d. 2010)

 

 

 

1944 – Robert Kardashian, American lawyer (d. 2003)

 

 

1962 – Steve Irwin, Australian herpetologist (d. 2006)

 

 

1975 – Drew Barrymore, American actress

 

 

 

 

All I know. Nuff said. Have a good Wednesday. Ciao.

xo Sue Mom Bobo

National Margarita Day on February 22nd rims a glass with salt and serves up a beverage that tastes like the summer sun.

Known to be the most common tequila-based cocktail served in the United States, the margarita is a cocktail that consists of tequila, triple sec and lime or lemon juice. A key ingredient is the freshly squeezed lime juice.  In the United States, the most common lime is the thick-skinned Persian lime. When margaritas are made with lemons, they have a much softer taste.

When it comes to sorting out the legends associated with the origin of the margarita, there are many. Two things are certain; the cocktail included tequila, and the bartender edged the rim of the glass with salt. In Mexico, when drinking straight tequila (especially if the quality was bad), the best course of action was to down it in one swallow, suck on a wedge of lime and lick a dash of salt off the back of your hand.

It makes sense that the salt followed the lime and the tequila to the margarita glass. Today, lime is not the only flavor of margarita, and the specialists behind the bar have gotten creative mixing dried herbs, infused sugars and exotic salts to enhance both the presentation of the glass and the flavor of the cocktail.

Margaritas can be served on the rocks (shaken with ice), frozen (blended with ice), or straight up (without ice).

Legends

There are many different stories and myths, beginning as early as 1938, as to how and when the margarita was created.

In the December 1953 issue of Esquire magazine, the margarita cocktail was the “Drink of the Month.”  The recipe as printed was:

• 1 ounce tequila
• Dash of Triple Sec
• Juice of 1/2 lime or lemon

Pour over crushed ice, stir.  Rub the rim of a stem glass with rind of lemon or lime, spin in salt—pour, and sip.  (Wikipedia)

The margarita was further popularized with the 1977 release of Jimmy Buffett’s song “Margaritaville.”