Tasty Tacos – #TacoTuesday #TuesdayTip

I love tacos and Mexican food in general. I just crave the combination of spices, vegetables, cheeses, and sour cream. So tasty! So today I’m sharing links to some awesome taco recipes.

    Taste of Home: 24 Recipes to Make for Taco Tuesday – http://bit.ly/2W2f0PC
    Tacos with Avocados: http://bit.ly/2W2PIAW
    Food Network Taco Recipes: http://bit.ly/2W0oCud
    Real Simple Tacos: http://bit.ly/2W0Grt9
    Food and Wine Best Taco Recipes: http://bit.ly/2W2Qm1k

If you make some tonight, please let me know which recipe and how you liked it! For party time, check out my layered taco dip at https://www.caridad.com/2006/12/13/caridads-tex-mex-dip/.
Taco Tuesday

Original Taco Image by ALFONSO CHARLES from Pixabay

Stuffed Zucchini Squash – #TuesdayTip

The other day I posted a before and after photo of the stuffed squash I made to take to my sister’s house for Easter. Since a number of you wanted a recipe, here goes!

Stuffed Squash

Ingredients:

    2 cups cooked Farro (cooled)
    2 cups Ricotta (drained)
    1 cup shredded mozzarella
    1 cup shredded provolone
    1/2 cup grated parmesan
    1/4 cup minced fresh basil
    1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms
    1/2 cup finely chopped carrots
    1/2 cup finely chopped celery
    1/2 of a red bell pepper, finely chopped
    1 cup finely chopped onions
    8 zucchini squash (or you can do 4 zucchini and 4 yellow squash like I did)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook farro according to package instructions. I used 1 cup of farro, 2 cups water, and some salt and set the mix to boil. Once boiling, I lowered the heat to have a very low boil. It took roughly 20 minutes for the farro to be cooked. Farro is a great ancient grain similar to barley. It’s slightly more al dente than rice and holds up well in a recipe like this where you are going to cook it again. I would actually leave it more al dente so it doesn’t get mushy. Cool the farro.

Saute the mushrooms, bell pepper, carrots, celery and onions in olive oil. I start with the mushrooms at high heat until they are half-done and then add the bell pepper and cook some more. Finally the carrots and celery for a minute or two before adding the onions. Mushrooms have a lot of water and doing them first at high heat helps avoid you steaming the rest of the veggies. Cook until all the vegetables are starting to brown.

Add vegetables to farro. Then add the ricotta, 1/4 cup of the mozzarella, 1/4 cup of the provolone, and the basil. Mix well.

Cut off the ends of the squash. Slice your squash in half the long way. With a teaspoon, scoop out the center to make a little canoe (leave some meat on the ends to keep the filling from spilling out).

With a teaspoon, spoon about 3 to 4 teaspoons of the farro mixture into the scooped out squash canoes and place in an oiled 9 x 13 pan. Top the filled canoes with the rest of the mozzarella and provolone. Dust with the grated parmesan. Add about 1/4 cup water to the bottom of each pan to prevent burning and provide some steam for the initial cooking.

Cover the pans with aluminum foil and bake covered for 20 minutes. Then remove the covers and bake for another twenty minutes uncovered. If the cheese has not toasted at the end of 40 minutes, give it a quick 2 or 3 minutes under the broiler!

And that’s it! Hope you enjoy today’s Tuesday Tip!
stuffed zucchini

Overnight Oats #TuesdayTip

Like always I’m working on eating healthier and losing weight. One of the things I’ve been trying to focus on is eating a healthy breakfast since studies show that helps in balancing your blood sugar levels and recharges your metabolism.

One breakfast item I’ve always loved is oatmeal, but if you’re like me and running around in the morning, you oftentimes forget to get it ready to take to work, which is were I usually eat breakfast since I get into the office early. I resolved to do better by packing the oatmeal at night and for good measure, adding in my unsweetened vanilla almond milk (saving those animal fats for cheese!).

Making the overnight oats made sure I wasn’t forgetting them, but I got to wondering if there was any benefit to them versus hot oatmeal. Voila, apparently there is! Not cooking the oats allows for the absorption of more nutrients, the overnight oats can be creamier, and they swell more which means the same dry amount will be larger in volume. That will lead to feeling more full. All pluses. For more on the benefits of overnight oats, check out:

    • http://www.eatthis.com/health-benefits-overnight-oats/
    • https://drhealthbenefits.com/food-bevarages/food/health-benefits-of-overnight-oats
    • http://www.bistromd.com/articles/why-you-should-be-making-overnight-oats

Add some fruit or even some chia seeds for extra anti-oxidants and protein!

#WriteWed Recipes for the Romantic Soul

I’ve been stuck on the next scene for EMBRACE THE NIGHT, but had a revelation this morning about it! Yeah. I’ll write it on the way home and hopefully have this story ready for you in early September. I’ll also have a new book for you with a baseball hero – ROOKIE OF THE YEAR. This is a contemporary romance revolving around a fictional NJ baseball team. The sequel to it – A WINNING SEASON – will be out in October.

Today’s Write Wednesday inspiration is all about recipes. You know I’ve been sharing them with you and I’ve decided to put them all together into a cookbook. I’ve been searching for the just right image for the cover and in truth, it occurred to me that just one image would not do it. I like the idea of a collage for the front cover of the book. RECIPES FOR THE ROMANTIC SOUL will not only have recipes, it’ll have stories about my family, friends and/or scenes in my books that inspired the recipe.

For now, if you’d like to try out some recipes, please visit the Cook’s Treat section of the website!
Cookstreat

Spring & #Strawberry #Recipes

Even though it’s still in the twenties today, Spring is definitely here! This morning as I walked through Bryant Park, the ice skating pond was gone and the lawn was back in place. Lovely flowers were in bloom in various spots.

I love the Spring flowers and I also love one other thing about Spring: STRAWBERRIES!

They are so luscious and of course, healthy for you. They have a good deal of sugar, but have a low glycemic load which means they won’t make your blood sugars shoot up and then crash. A cup of strawberries has 150% of your daily requirement of Vitamin C. They also contain manganese and antioxidants.

So, today I’m going to take you to a list of 60 – SIXTY – fabulous strawberry recipes. Just click here to see them!

Also, don’t forget this is Day 2 of the Double Trouble Blog Tour! Come visit with me at the All the Fun Starts After Dark blog today and follow the rules for a chance to win some fun prizes!

Website Design KISS

As you can see, we’ve got a whole new look to the site and a big thanks to the designer – MJ from Sizzle Designs. I absolutely love what she’s done and I hope you do as well. It’s clean, but its mood definitely reflects my romantic suspense and paranormals.

So there are a few little tweaks on things I didn’t think about immediately (sorry MJ!) and then there’s the reconstruction of the pages from the old website.

Why reconstruction? Well, I’ve learned a few things and also didn’t realize just how long it had been since I updated some of the pages. So little by little, I’ll be working on those, especially since I’ve got the second SINS book – STRONGER THAN SIN – due to be delivered later in the year.

Here’s what I’ve learned and will share with you in the hopes it will help you with your own website design.

  • Keep It Simple Stupid: Yep, I let my natural desire to bling just put way too much stuff on certain parts of the site. So to keep it looking clean and professional, I’m trying to unclutter.
  • Let the program do it for you: There’s a number of places where it would be way easier just to let programming bring in content. For example, on my Cook’s Treat page I’ve figured out how to feed in all the blog posts that had recipes. Much better than my remembering to code and add those blog posts every time. Now I’ve got to work on putting them in alphabetical order, but at least there’s no more recoding to do!
  • Forget about links to third party news articles: I’ve discovered that online newspapers, etc. don’t keep their articles up for long periods of time and the URLs no longer work. So, rather than having a lot of dead links (as I had on my Press Page), I’m going to just stick to mentioning the articles without a link. But if anyone knows of a good link checker, it would be greatly appreciated.
  • Don’t mention dates without a year!: I didn’t realize how many times I said, “this October” or similar and forgot to go back and update it later. So “this October” was actually like three Octobers ago! Be specific with dates or maybe better yet – if the date isn’t important, leave it out.
  • Using Categories Correctly: Remember that comment about letting the program do it. Well to do that you have to be consistent. WordPress and many other programs let you create “categories” for your links and blog posts. Be consistent when you use those so that you can pull up just the content you want rather than a mish-mosh of unrelated posts. Also, create categories that will actually assist you in gathering data for your website visitors.

Thanks for dropping by! I hope this Tuesday Tip was helpful!

Also, please be sure to drop by tomorrow to share some time with a wonderful friend and fellow author – Amanda McIntyre. Amanda will be sharing some of her recent exploits with us and anyone who leaves a comment on tomorrow’s blog by midnight EST will be eligible to win a SINS OF THE FLESH t-shirt!

Tortured by Amanda McIntyre

Corn Salsa

cornI got tired of the same old same old that we’d been eating and decided to try something different last Saturday — Pulled Pork. I have a dry rub recipe that I use on my ribs and brisket and slathered that on some pork loins, slipped them into the oven to cook for some time and then pulled apart that tender pork and added some more rub and KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce (the tastiest so far in my book).

The problem was, what to eat with the pulled pork sandwiches? I decided on a simple corn salsa. In the summer I’d probably roast fresh corn on the BBQ, but this time I had to rely on some frozen corn and the other ingredients in my fridge and pantry. So here goes my recipe for a simple corn salsa, a bright side dish to any spicy or sweet meal.

CORN SALSA

4 cups cooked corn
1 cup finely chopped onions (red make a nice color variation if you have them)
1/2 cup chopped pimentos
2 cup chopped tomatoes
1 16 oz can black beans
fresh parsley or cilantro if you have (if not dried will work)
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil and pepper to taste.

Just mix all of the above in a bowl and let it marinate for about an your. Like your salsa spicier? Add a shot or two of Tabasco or Cholula sauce or even better, some chopped jalapenos. For more color variation, chop avocado and add it to the mix.

Hope you enjoyed this Tuesday’s Tip!