Creative Popcorn Toppings

We love to eat popcorn in my house. Thanks to Publix we always have some because of the buy one get one free sales they have. I don't always like just butter popcorn, even the movie theater butter microwave kind. I usually add something to it. The only time I really want butter popcorn is at the movies because I always get extra extra butter. I don't really go to the movies often.

Here are some of my creative popcorn toppings I have discovered through the years.

Parmesan cheese popcorn

You can use either the sprinkles or the shreds. I use both. It just depends because Noah likes the sprinkle kind. The shredded kind gets a little crunchy but its so good.

Jalapeño Popcorn

This is something I learned in Texas with my cousins and her kids. We went to the movies and they put jalapeños on their popcorn. I tried it with just the juice because I wasn't in to Jalapeños. Now I love them so I just throw them on top too.

Homemade Garlic Popcorn

I totally love garlic popcorn but I can't eat it very often because my stomach hurts after, but it's definitely worth it.

Popcorn and icing

This is something I used to do with my Grandma Rose. She had heart problems and was on a special diet and so she had an air popper. The popcorn was pretty bland so I would dip it in chocolate icing. It was surprisingly good.

Chili powder on popcorn is not good. I really like chili powder but never on popcorn.

How do you like to eat popcorn?

Sheila's Spaghetti with Meat Recipe

When you think about spaghetti, you know that it is a meal that is great for feeding a bunch of people. Spaghetti is cheap and easy to make for a meal where you have lots of guests.  When I think of spaghetti I always think of the book Strega Nona. I think of Strega Nona and Big Anthony because I either make way too much or not enough.  Usually, it is way too much. Luckily, Noah loves spaghetti and he will gobble it up, like it’s no one’s business. There are different ways to make it of course. Most of the time I just make it with just sauce poured on and parmesan cheese. I will call that traditional spaghetti, but sometimes I want something more than just the sauce.  Usually when I can find hamburger on sale, I will make this recipe. It is great for serving a group because it is so filling and good. It is also really easy to make.

Sheila’s Meat Spaghetti Recipe

One box spaghetti

One Can Spaghetti Sauce whatever flavor you would like. I use Hunts

One pound hamburger

One small onion

A few garlic cloves

Cook Spaghetti per the box directions in a big pot, while it is cooking, start browning the hamburger in a skillet;  chop up onion and garlic. When the hamburger is almost done add the onion and garlic and cook through.  Drain the hamburger mixture.  Drain the spaghetti and return to the pot. Add the sauce and hamburger mixture and combine and  Enjoy!

Garlic Burgers Recipe

This recipe is one of my absolute favorites. I have about ten recipes or so that are my favorites. Most people like to eat a good burger unless you are a vegetarian then you probably don't. I have had many different types of burgers at restaurants. I have made many hamburgers but hands down this is my absolute favorite. Once you try these you will not want to have any ordinary burger again. It contains two of my favorite ingredients. Onions and Garlic. I have made my Garlic burgers for friends and family. We had them at Noah's second birthday party. Everyone raves about them. 

I make these on a grill pan. A skillet will also work. I guess you could make them on a grill, however I will not because the best part is the little bits of yumminess. They are onions and garlic that have glazed on the grill pan. Those little bits would fall in the grill and that would make me really sad. 

Check out those huge chunks of garlic!

Garlic Burgers

1 pound hamburger
1 head of Garlic or 2 smallish heads
1 small onion
Seasoning Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the top off the head of garlic and drizzle with olive oil. Wrap in foil and bake for 45 minutes. You are roasting the garlic.

While the garlic cools enough for you to handle, chop the onion in to small pieces. Place the hamburger in a bowl and add the onion and garlic.

I try and use my fingers to get the cloves out whole or almost whole. You can squeeze it but really you are wasting garlic goodness.

Mix together with your hands and shape in to four patties. Make them thin because they thicken as they cook.

Liberally sprinkle your grill pan with seasoning salt and pepper.  Preheat your grill pan or skillet be sure to not breathe in the pepper while it heats up. You will know it is ready when you can put a drop of water on it and it will sizzle up.

Place the hamburgers on the grill pan or skillet and let them cook. Try not to flip them too much, for even cooking.

If you want to add cheese do it when they are completely cooked. I don't like cheese on mine. It doesn't need it. 

I also like to heat the bun on top of the cooked burgers.

Remove hamburgers and scrape the brown bits off. It is the best part. It's caramelized onion and roasted garlic.

Enjoy!

Let me know if you try this recipe. I look forward to your thoughts.

What's Cool about Vampires?

I don’t understand the fascination with vampires these days.  Vampires scare me. I used to love watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie. I never watched the TV show. I had no interest.  I didn’t watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer because of the vampires. I loved that she was a total valley girl and it was funny.  I thought it was kind of scary the first few times I watched it.  I remember watching it at Atlantic Beach in North Carolina with my old best friend Jenny. I remember we got in a big fight once when we watched it, and Caboodles were flying, or maybe it was ice and Caboodles and doll carriages were another time.  I don’t understand the whole Twilight phenomenon. I don’t think that guys should twinkle or sparkle or whatever they do in that movie.  For the record, I am not a werewolf fan either if you were wondering.  I don’t know what the cool thing about pale creatures drinking blood is. I do absolutely love Count Duckula.  Yes, I own the first season of Count Duckula. How can you not love him and Nanny and Igor? It was one of the coolest shows ever.  I was so excited when I got that on DVD.  I totally was a dork when I watched it with my friend Ben and the Thames thing came up.  If you don’t know what I am talking about it, check it out on YouTube. If you remember you will have the same reaction we did. We both felt like we were transported to our childhoods together.  It was like mind blowing.

I admittedly love the movie My Best Friend is a Vampire, but that is also a comedy.  I know there are all kinds of movies and TV shows about vampires, not the funny nice ones but the carnal ones that are all about the gore and I don’t know, I just couldn’t get in to them. I didn’t really like Interview with a Vampire and you already know how I feel about Queen of the Damned.  If you missed that post, I can’t stand it.  Maybe if they had nice vampires like Count Duckula, who was a vegetarian, I would be more apt to liking them.  I think it is gross.  It is scary, and not for me.  One of my favorite foods is garlic, so I know I am safe from vampires.  I eat enough that I don’t think they would even come within 100 miles of me.

I just remembered this guy from high school named Jerry. He was a vampire. Not a real one obviously, but I remember being leery of him.  He had fangs. He was in my drama class and I heard stories of him trying to drink people’s blood, and maybe an animal or two.  He was also a grip so when I was in choir he was always lurking in the shadows behind the scenes of the auditorium.  There weren’t any creepy blood loss deaths when I was in school, but I wasn’t going to take my chances.

Do you like vampires? What is it that you like about them?

Enjoy Garlic Joy!

I love garlic. I love it so much. I am like The Grinch because I might just have garlic in my soul.  Not in a bad way though. It is just so freaking delicious.  Garlic is so good for you and wards off the vampires. I love it in all forms. I am not too big on garlic powders or garlic salts but will use them in a pinch.  Garlic powder is good in pitas though.  When I was in Florida, in September visiting my mom before we went on the cruise, we went to Gecko Fest.  Of course it only made sense that Geico sponsored it. We stumbled on a booth for this garlic product. I of course had to try it.  I am after all the Garlic Queen. I tried it and fell in love.  It is called Garlic Joy. The name is extremely fitting because it brought me joy.  I wasn’t able to buy any at the time, but I thought about it for months.  We went to the farmers market, last week knowing they were going to be there. They go to all the events down here.  The woman asked me if I like garlic. I said I love garlic. I tried another sample and I bought a jar of the Original Garlic Joy Spread.  It comes in four flavors. I am the kind of woman that says don’t mess with my garlic. They also make spaghetti sauce and other gourmet foods. I am in love. There isn’t any dairy in it and it contains 12 cloves of garlic in each jar. I love that it is all natural and it makes me feel like I am in garlic heaven.

I love that I am able to take a short walk every week and buy some more anytime I want. It is so creamy and so good. If you love garlic as much as I do, you should order some Garlic Joy. You won’t be disappointed. I promise it is amazing.

No one asked me to write this, and or tweet about it. I gladly gave my $8.95 to them in exchange for a jar of Garlic Joy. Thank you to Garlic Joy though for making such a delicious product for me to enjoy.

Ward Off Vampires This Halloween with Garlic Turbana Plantain Chips

I love Cuban food. I am sure some of you remember my recipe for Cuban Sandwiches on my blog. I am a pretty picky eater and I was unsure about trying plantains for the first time. I think I probably had to be coerced to try them.  I ended up loving them.  My favorite kinds of plantains are the chips. When I lived in South Florida, I happened to live pretty much across the street from my favorite Cuban restaurant that I ended up going to a few years earlier on vacation a couple times.  The smashed plantains are good too, but not as good as the chips. That was my favorite thing to order from the Cuban restaurant with my Cubano.  When I first fell in love with Plantain chips, I was living in Indiana. I remember going on a plantain chip hunt with my ex husband.  We probably when to four Latino grocery stores before we found plantain chips back in 2004.  So, when I had the opportunity to review some Turbana Plantain chips you knew I jumped on that opportunity.  Turbana is a company that is based in South Florida, close to where I used to live.  They make flavored plantain chips. They are a much healthier choice than the normal potato chips. They would be a better afterschool snack or even with Halloween coming up as a better alternative for Trick or Treaters.  You know that your kids are going to end up with tons of candy, it would be nice if some people gave out some Turbana Plantain Chips, hopefully the garlic flavor for two reasons. The first reason is to ward off those vampires.  #2 so I can eat them all. 

 When I received the Turbana plantain chips to try out, they seriously lasted a hour. I salivated at the thought of garlic plantain chips. I think that the company must have done their research on me and knew that garlic is one of my most favorite things to eat. Yeah, they were shoveled in my mouth by the handful.  I was so sad when they were all gone. I had Noah, who gets his picky eater syndrome from me, try one.  He thought the garlic ones were hot.  I wasn’t too sad, I said to him, more for me then.  I asked him if he wanted to try the regular plantain chips, I told him they weren’t hot, and he loved him. He said and I quote. Plantain chips are my most  favoritest food.  Noah doesn’t really eat any chips though so I am glad he loves plantains as much as I do.   I felt good about giving Noah them because they have 30% less fat than potato chips and twice the flavor. I am sure someone out there is unaware of what a plantain is. I didn’t know for most of my life. It looks similar to a banana, but it doesn’t taste like one.  It’s a tropical food, it is used a lot in Latino cuisine.  It sounds different but we love them.  So, from my picky eaters to yours, check out Turbana Plantain chips.  

For more information please check out the Turbana Plantainchips website.

I received some samples of Turbana Plantain chips for my family to try out. All thoughts and opinions are our own.

Lemon- Garlic Chicken from Kroger and ConAgra #weeknightmeals

More check-ins at Kroger

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I was able to participate in another Kroger shop. This time I used my widget on my sidebar to try out a new recipe called Lemon Garlic Chicken. I was really excited to try it out. I went to the website and printed the recipe and the shopping list. I never read recipes right off my computer because I would make a mess. Today’s Kroger trip was an adventure to say the least. It wasn’t bad, just crazy. I have been trying to have Noah walk more at the store instead of riding in the cart. He loves to push the cart and explore things. He does a great job at pushing the cart; it is really cute to see him pushing it. Today, we were in the area with the cheese, and produce. I went to get a sample of cheese for both of us and Noah was at the salad bar trying to sample things. He really thought they were samples. There was a guy who works there at the gourmet cheeses and he and I were both laughing so hard. I was like Noah, come here. He was totally going to help himself to whatever looked good. I mean he has seen me get a sample from the sample tray so he just thought it was the same thing.

We saw some pretty good deals. Noah had to check out the lobster tank too of course. I had to buy some chicken and they were pretty low stocked on chicken. I even checked the meat counter. I did find some, but it was a bigger package than I wanted to buy. It might have been because it was only $1.99 a pound which is a great price. We did find everything we needed though. I also picked up a couple other items that were a good price as a treat. I saw a lot of ConAgra products on sale too. I tried a recipe called Hero Joes a couple weeks ago and I was tempted to buy the ingredients for that as well, but decided I would another day. Noah wanted to sample some yogurt and when he was finished he threw away his spoon and little cup and walked away. He went back to the trash and was worried because he threw the spoon away and tried to get it back out. I had to explain to him that it was a throw away spoon, not like the ones we have at home. Once we got all our groceries we were ready to check out. This meal is very inexpensive to make.

When I was ready to make dinner, it was really easy to throw together. I had to cut the chicken breasts in half because there was only three in the package. The package of chicken weighted 2 and a half pounds. I think it would be great to use tenders too. The first thing that surprised me was that you don’t cook it on the stove. It is completely oven baked, that cuts down on the fat. If you know me, you know how much I hate doing dishes. I love this recipe because you don’t use any bowls, you put everything in bags and shake it. Once you are done with the bags you throw them in the trash and clean up is a breeze. It takes only 25 minutes to bake too. So easy, I couldn’t wait to try it.

Here is the recipe for Lemon-Garlic Chicken:

Ingredients
• PAM® Original No-Stick Cooking Spray
• 1/2 cup Italian-style bread crumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon lemon pepper
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons Pure Wesson® Canola Oil
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (4 breasts = 1 lb)

Nutrition Information*
Serving Size 4 servings (1 breast each)
Calories 202
View complete nutrition information

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray shallow baking pan with cooking spray. Combine bread crumbs, garlic salt and lemon pepper in recloseable food storage bag. Combine lemon juice and oil in another recloseable food storage bag.
2. Add chicken to bag with lemon juice mixture; toss to coat. Place each breast in bag with crumb mixture; shake to coat. Place coated chicken in single layer in baking pan. Sprinkle any remaining crumbs over chicken, if desired.
3. Spray tops of chicken with cooking spray. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink in centers (165°F).

I love how you get the breaded coating and you don’t have to mess with frying it. I know that there are a lot of dietary restrictions out there where people cannot have fried food. This would be a great option for them. There is no butter or eggs in it either. The wet part of the recipe is a little bit of oil and some lemon juice. Honestly, I was a little worried because I am not a huge lemon pepper fan, but really it was really good. The flavors were married perfectly. The lemon pepper wasn’t over powering. It had the perfect amount of crunch too. We had baked potatoes and corn to go with it. I really enjoyed it and so did my family. I love that I am trying so many delicious recipes from Kroger and ConAgra.

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Garlic Twist Review

Everyone knows I love garlic. I will only use fresh garlic. With fresh garlic that means I have to chop it which can be very time consuming. I thought I would be smart and buy one of those garlic cutting gadgets with the wheels. It didn’t work very well, it made the garlic in to paste, it was hard to remove the garlic, it was hard to clean because there was a blade that made me nervous as it could do some serious damage. The garlic smell was almost impossible to get off of it. I only used it twice and decided it was more trouble than it was worth and went back to chopping or mincing.

I learned about a gadget called the 3rd Generation Garlic Twist or the GT3 for short and I just had to try it. The GT3 is made by NexTrend Products. I love this product because it has little teeth instead of a dangerous blade. All you do is whack the clove twice to remove the skin and then put in 2 or 3 cloves of garlic in and twist it. It is really easy and fast to use. I had my garlic minced quickly. It is really a time saver in my opinion. I was able to get the garlic out easier since it is circular. I was able to run my fingers on the teeth to help remove the garlic, which is something I would have never done with the one with wheels. The garlic was perfect, it minced it smaller than I could which was a good thing because it brought out the garlic flavor more. I really recommend the 3rd Generation Garlic Twist for the chef in your life. My favorite part is that you can put it on the top rack of the dish washer! As some of you know I hate doing dishes, so I love things that I can just put in the dish washer and not have to worry about it.

For more information please visit The Nextrend website.

Thank you to NextTrend for sending me a sample of the GT3 to try out and review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

How to Roast Garlic

I love Garlic. I have been proclaimed the Garlic Queen. We went to Garlic Fest in 2008, in Delray Beach. Noah is a graduate of Garlic University. He has a diploma and all. I love Garlic in every way shape and form. Noah loves garlic too. I definitely prefer fresh garlic and not the kind that comes in a jar. I love roasted garlic. I know some people like it on crackers; I prefer it on Cheddar Pringles. When you go to a restaurant you can pay like 5 or 6 dollars for a head of roasted garlic and some bread or crackers. It is really easy to make. I thought I would do a post on How to Roast Garlic.

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Step 2: Cut the tops off the head of garlic making sure all of the cloves are exposed. You might have to do a little grooming for the ones that don’t get exposed during the initial cut.

Step 3: Get a piece of aluminum foil (big enough to wrap the head of garlic) and place the garlic on it. Drizzle the exposed cloves with Olive Oil and wrap tightly. I think the pull up and twist method works the best.

Step 4: place in a little pan or loaf pan incase of leakage and put in the oven for 45 minutes.

Step 5: Let cool a little and remove the cloves and enjoy.

Now for some hints:

Tight heads work the best.

Don’t break or remove the skin of the garlic before roasting.

To help the garlic cool faster unwrap the aluminum foil.

One head of Garlic can feed two people maybe more depending on how much you love garlic. I usually eat one by myself.

See how easy it is? Now you can have roasted garlic anytime you want.