Buffalo Bleu Tailgate Bars {recipe video}

Tropical Foods

Tropical Foods is a Charlotte-based food manufacturer and importer and distributor of bulk and packaged snacks and specialty foods.  Phew, that’s a lot of hats!  What this translates to is snack mixes, dried fruits, nuts and seeds, dipping chocolates, salad bar mix-ins, and garden chips, just to name a few of Tropical’s thousands of products.  The Charlotte production plant roasts nuts and seeds daily (in trans-fat-free oil), and goods are shipped from one of their six locations:  Charlotte, Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, Orlando, and Washington DC.

Back in the Fall, Tropical Foods sponsored a recipe contest at Johnson & Wales University here in Charlotte, and I recently partnered with Tropical on a super fun project to create recipe videos for the top three recipes from the contest (plus, one video for a recipe that I specially developed for Tropical).  The whole video shooting process was new to me, and it was both fun and challenging!  I’ll post more about the videos in the coming weeks including a HUGE TROPICAL FOODS GIVEAWAY, but in the mean time here’s the first of four videos, my official YouTube debut.  Enjoy!

Buffalo Bleu Tailgate Bars

Buffalo Bleu Tailgate Bars Recipe PDF

Looking for Tropical Foods products?  You can buy nuts and snacks direct from their new retail site:  www.tropicalsnuthouse.com.  Tropical Foods products are also available in many grocery stores, including Harris Teeter and Healthy Home Market.

 Buffalo Bleu Tailgate Bars -- Tropical Foods Buffalo Nuts

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Baked Shrimp with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes {recipe}

One of the perks of working in the city is having the world at your fingertips on your lunch break.  When the clock hits noon, I like to hit the street.  Often, I’ll swing through the library or take a stroll through the 7th St Public Market.  When it’s warm, I find a nice table in the shade and read while I eat, and when it’s cold, I saddle up next to the fireplace at Carribou.  There’s a grocery store just a few blocks away, and I’ve found squeezing my shopping into my lunch break to be not only productive but surprisingly liberating.

Shrimp and Fire Roasted Tomatoes

Last week, on a lunch-break grocery shopping spree, I picked up ingredients for this shrimp and tomato bake.  It’s a low-stress meal that can easily be made after work or prepared the day before.  (I find that recipes using canned tomatoes taste even better when they’ve had time to sit.)  Shrimp, tomatoes, and a bit of cheese–it’s a dish built for carbohydrates.  I recommend a crusty bread or a twirly noodle.

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Asian Pork Tenderloin Skewers {recipe}

About that recipe I promised you…

asian pork tenderloin skewers

How good do these pork skewers look?

I tend to shy away from Asian cooking.  Usually, it’s because the recipe calls for lots of ingredients I don’t have on hand (rice vinegar, sesame oil, fish sauce?  oyster sauce??).  The long recipes and foreign (no pun intended) techniques are intimidating!  Last year, in a short-lived wave of cooking confidence, I bought a wok at Ikea, and I’ve used it a whopping two times.

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Caramelized Onion & Sausage Frittata {recipe}

If you’ve checked out my Facebook page, you already know I’ve got a thing for Sunday breakfast.  You’d also know what I cooked this week, and that I sliced half of my thumb off with my mandoline over the weekend.  See what you’re missing?!

But I digress.  Let’s get back to breakfast.

caramelized onion and sausage frittata

 

Six days of the week, I eat plain ole eggs with toast for breakfast, and I’m more than ok with it.  But things change when Sunday rolls around.  That’s when I start to crave something special–maybe a breakfast burrito or home fries or a big fat Belgian waffle.  Despite this urge for decadence, nothing makes me happier than enjoying my lavish breakfast spread from the comfort of my pj’s, in my own house, sipping my own coffee.

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Beans and Bulgur {recipe}

I had some free time over the weekend, so I sat down with my laptop, opened up Excel, and scheduled out every hour of my work week in a beautifully color coded spreadsheet.

Did I mention I’m an accountant?

Right.

Anyway, once I factored in sleep, work, exercise, commute, time to eat, and bathing/primp time, I found I have about three hours of “free” time each work day.  THREE.  I have big aspirations each week—home cooked meals, coffee with friends, blogging,  Wheel of Fortune, flossing, plus 30 minutes of reading before bed—but with these dismal findings, it’s clear I can’t squeeze all of that in every night.

Years ago, in an effort to increase my workweek free time, I started batch cooking food on Sundays.  Sunday morning, while I sip my coffee and listen to NPR, I get to work in kitchen cooking meals for the workweek and portioning them into single-serve containers.  The single-serve containers are KEY.

A typical Sunday cooking session includes:

  • 5 servings of steel cut oats with almonds, blueberries, and cinnamon
  • 2 servings of quinoa (for sprinkling on salad)
  • salads.  Lately it’s mixed greens, tomatoes, onion, cucumber, feta cheese, and half a serving of cold quinoa plus balsamic vinaigrette (in a separate container).  I only prepare salads two at a time because I HATE soggy veggies.  Blegh.
  • snacks.  My go-tos are hummus & veggies, Greek yogurt and fruit, or a loaf of sprouted bread that I keep at work along with some PB to make sandwiches at my desk.  Don’t judge.  I also keep a container of almonds in my desk drawer.
  • The wild card:  something, ANYTHING, I can use for workweek dinners

On a normal work day, I make myself eggs and toast before heading to the office, but when I’m really crunched for time I’ll cook a large batch of scrambled eggs or an egg casserole on Sunday that I can quickly heat up each morning before heading out the door.

I can get by eating the same breakfast, lunch, and snacks most days of the week, but when it comes to dinner I honestly get depressed if I eat the same boring thing every night.

beans and bulgur (4)

Dinner ideas usually come from brainstorming ways to use up leftovers from the weekend.  Other times I’ll cook a big batch of something that I can use in many different ways, so I don’t get stuck eating the same thing four nights in a row.  That could be a giant roasted spaghetti squash, a batch of black bean burgers, or a pot of some sort of grain.  This week, my dinners will revolve around a big ole batch of beans and bulgur.

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