Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Seafood Sandwich

This recipe is not only a no cook recipe, but is one of my favorite things to make for lunch. I'm a typical college student who is strapped for time so I don't like to cook for lunch. I find that Safeway sells this amazing seafood salad in their meat section; it's $5.99 and it makes up to four sandwiches. Plus, it's about the same price as a package of deli meat. Here's a picture of it:


For some reason, I wouldn't want to tweak this combination of ingredients. Each element seems to go really well with the others, plus the potato bread, seafood salad, cheese, and avocado are such a pretty combination of summery colors.

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Seafood Sandwich

Serves 4.

1 package of potato bread buns
1 package of Salads of the Sea, Seafood Salad
4 slices of medium sharp cheddar cheese
1 ripe avocado, sliced

Arrange ingredients onto 4 buns, with cheese on the bottom, then seafood salad in the middle, with sliced avocados on top.

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This day, I ate Pink Lady apples with my sammy. It was the first time that I tried them. I usually like to eat Fuji apples, but I decided to branch out. Apparently, Jennifer Connelly has said that she eats 3 of them a day. I liked them too, but not THAT much!

Pink Lady apples have a really interesting background. First of all, I must say they really are pink! They have a really distinct flavor - kind of sour but still pretty sweet. According to orangepippin.com... "The marketing effort has particularly targeted young women, and has resulted in Pink Lady apples being promoted in such unlikely settings as the Glastonbury music festival, as well as in women's magazines, and cross-marketed with Barbie dolls. Pink Lady even has its own website - www.pinkladyapples.co.uk. The marketing effort for Pink Lady focuses on lifestyle rather than flavour, and having achieved about 10% of the UK market in a very short space of time, it is clearly working." It's so weird how the color pink is like every marketing executive's dream. There's the pink blackberry phone, the pink Nintendo DS, "Pink" the Victoria's Secret brand... How funny that it actually works!

Sloppy Joes and Cornbread

Cooking for myself is great for a lot of reasons. I get to control how healthy and nutritious my food is and I get to pick stuff that I love to eat. Growing up, I really loved sloppy joes. I never got to eat it at home, just occasionally whenever my school cafeteria happened to serve them. There is something I've noticed about the recipe though. A sloppy joe is made as if you took the inside of a hamburger, (onions, ketchup, mustard, and beef), put it in a blender, and then put it back onto a bun. No wonder they taste so good :). Anyhow, if you're going to do sloppy joes, which are quintessentially American, might as well serve it with a slice of cornbread. Some recipes online even suggest serving the sloppy joe mixture over the cornbread! Below are recipes for my take on sloppy joes and for honey butter to serve on your cornbread.

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Sloppy Joes

Serves 5.

1 pound of extra lean ground beef
1 whole green pepper, finely chopped
1/2 a large yellow onion, finely chopped
6 oz can of tomato sauce, no salt added
1 cup of ketchup
2 tbsp. spicy sweet mustard
1/4 tsp. pepper
salt to taste
5 whole wheat hamburger buns

Spray skillet with nonfat cooking spray. Cook green pepper and onion. Add ground beef and break up the beef while cooking until beef is crumbly. While the beef, peppers, and onion are cooking on the stove, combine the remaining ingredients into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. As soon as beef is no longer pink, add the sauce and simmer for 10 minutes.


Cornbread with Honey Butter

1 9x9 inch pan
1 package of Marie Calendar's Original Corn Bread Mix
1 15 oz. can of whole kernel corn
4 tbsp honey
4 tbsp Smart Balance (or butter)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Follow directions on the back of the package for the recipe containing real corn (it tastes better!).

Stir equal parts honey with equal parts smart balance in a separate bowl until fluffy. Voila! Instant honey butter. It is a divine combination :)