Leaning Tower Salad

Of all the things on my menu, this item raised the most questions.

They are very simple to make, but a bit time intensive.

I think it took me an hour to make all of the salads.

Thank goodness for food processors!

~

I first put 2 tsp. of zesty vinaigrette in the bottom of each glass.

Zesty vinaigrette is made by a friend of mine - Wishbone.

Then I added layers of finely chopped vegetables.

From the bottom up:

Tomato, celery, potato salad, hard boiled eggs, broccoli, carrots, red cabbage, feta cheese, red and orange peppers.

I served the salads with the crabcakes and charon sauce.

Can Jam January - Citrus

The first Tigress in a Jam - Can Jam!

The theme for this month is citrus.

Pure Gold Marmalade, my own recipe of orange, lemon, passion fruit, mango and peach, is my first choice for citrus, but I still have quite a few jars of it in my pantry and I couldn't find any frozen passion fruit, so I made something new.

I combined Minneola oranges, clementines, peaches, mango puree and guava puree.


The Minneola orange is a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit.

Deep red-orange and sometimes called the minneola tangelo, sometimes misspelled mineola, is easily recognized by its characteristic slightly elongated "neck" on one end.

At its peak of maturity, its pebbly peel turns to a very attractive bright reddish-orange color.

This tasty fruit is easy to peel, has a high juice content.

The ingredients above.

I like to buy fruits like mango, guava and passion fruit as frozen puree.

Because (a) it's easier - I hate peeling mangos (b) I feel like it might be fresher - the difference between tomatoes frozen at their peak in summer and fresh shipped tomatoes in the middle of winter might hold true with mangos too. (c) I can't buy local exotic fruits and it's cheaper to ship flat packages of frozen fruit than fresh fruit.

Just my opinion.

Above: The clementines in the food processor.



Some of the fruit before cooking.

I also added one bottle of ginger beer, 3 Tbs ground ginger and 1/3 cup bottled lemon juice.

Plus one pound of white sugar.



Jars bubbling away.



Removing jars from canner.




Finished orange/citrus ginger sauce.



Mmmmm, yummy!
Good for sauces or salads.
Or just on bread.
I think it is a little too runny to call marmalade, so I'm calling it Citrus Sauce.




Tilapia with citrus sauce.

Citrus sauce tilapia on a bed of shredded cabbage slaw.

The orange and ginger really taste amazing together.

I had a lot of fun with this Can Jam!

I know that on my own I never would have canned anything in January.

Now I have a nice gift to add to the gift baskets I'm making for the dinner party on Saturday.

I think I might include a card with recipe ideas for this Citrus Sauce.

Sunday Dinner At Grandma's

I had dinner at my Grandma's house on Sunday.

My whole family went to visit Grandma - all 3 of us!

My Mom brought the dinner, so Grandma wouldn't have to cook.

And so she could eat something different.

It's always nice to eat someone else's cooking occasionally.

Above is the yummy salad with avocados, peppers, feta and tons of yummy veggies.

So nice to eat something fresh in the winter!

We also had lasagna.



And this yummy Butterscotch Pumpkin pie that my Grandma made.



There's my Grandma with a slice of pie.

And my Dad eating the pie.