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Hosted by Barbara J Nosek
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Quick Bites – 
If you’ve been familiar with WalMart over the years you know that the company has regularly increased its emphasis on food. And now their newsletters include some pretty darn good looking recipes, such as a recent one for Apple Cider Glazed Salmon with the contrasting flavors of honey and whole grain mustard. Yikes, at least six different gremlins can make our cookies go flat, according the this story we were re-directed to from the current “Today’s Fresh Finds” post. It’s chili season! And this is really kind of interesting, 5 Secrets to a Healthier, Heartier Chili from Clean Plates, and there’s a lot of good emphasis is on the hearty part.
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Shopping Finds – A perk of watching Fieri’s GGG show is the possibility of discovering grocery store products you
didn’t know existed. Though in this case maybe you did. Did you? – it’s bacon flavored popcorn. But did you know about this, and oh yum, yum, yum. Reese’s peanut butter sauce {on Amazon}. Truth be told, I wish it had the chocolate too, but hey we can add that if we want. No disappointment indicated in the reviews, 4+ stars. Btw, there’s also a topping version. And then kind of mashing up those two themes, a shopper on a more recent GGG episode introduced us to peanut butter powder. How the heck would you use that? Here’s what google has to say.
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Kitchen Talk – Nachos chillin’ out. Sort of a reverse of my Mexican salad {09.04.20 Salon}, a Dorito or corn chip 
base topped with smashed avocado, tomato, Mex onions, black olives, jack shreds, sour cream, cilantro and hot sauce {shown}. Did you make any of the cheese pumpkins from our 10.02.20 Salon? Leftovers? With or without the olives and green pepper, let the whole disk sink into a bowl of hot cream soup. My new favorite Food Network host brings us the show of the same name, Delicious Miss Brown. What comes out of this kitchen hits 10 on the comfort food scale, accompanied by a generous side dish of southern hospitality. Just one recent example, a scoop of butter-caramelized onions added inside a grilled cheese sandwich {and don’t spare the cheese}.
On the Table
Feature – Chocolate Brownie Ice Cream Bread – just three ingredients!
Previously I’ve made this recipe with French Vanilla ice cream, and then Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. I found the texture of those two be midway between French bread and pound cake.
This one – you could frost. It comes closest to actual cake, a nice moist chocolate cake.
It’s good as is. It would be good with frosting. It was good with cherry pie filling, a Black Forest vibe, and also nestled into a bed of caramel or just crisped in a skillet. And as with the other two, it freezes very nicely.
All in all it’s such an easy prep. Just ice cream, self-rising flour and a bit of sugar, then into a small pan, bake and done.
Original recipe in 07.17.20 Salon
Recipe Notes – I’ve learned: 1} You don’t need to buy premium ice cream but you do want to use good quality for the best texture, 2} The baking time can vary based on the flavor you use, so you need to test each time, and 3} While the bread is very good on day one, it’s even better in the days following. One other thing, though it’s fun working with gussied up ice cream, I really liked the French vanilla one best.
Next week – Baked rigatoni with sausage, fennel and peperonata – tomatoey, creamy, cheesy
A Cuppa with Alexa – Recipes, Tips, News & More
You don’t have to have an Amazon Echo Show to tap into the particular tidbits we’ve linked below, drawn from its vast 
culinary bounty.
Just pour a cup and let’s talk food with Alexa. We also show the actual requests for those who are Echo owners, who should also note that in many cases she guides you step by step through the recipes.
Alexa says request: How do I make Pizza Tots? Oh yum, tots with a surprise inside. Pretty easy too, simply a matter of mixing store bought shredded hash browns with eggs and seasonings and forming small handfuls of the mixture around mozzarella and pepperoni, then freezing and frying. And voila! Pizza Tots, on the Tasty site, demo included.
Alexa says request: How do make peanut butter cake? Tasty delivers again! The actual full title is Chocolate Peanut Butter Poke Cake. Well, guess that pretty much tells us everything we need to know. Except maybe the good news that all the richness builds on the convenience of cake mix.
My request: How do you open a stubborn jar? Alexa sends us to Wikihow, and this is so cool. First are some ways to “get a grip,” then using tools to break the air seal, then a Community Q&A that addresses various tight spots, and finally a demo. By the time you reach the end, that lid shouldn’t stand a chance.
And an unexpected thing we found that Alexa can do – tell a spooky story
Would you like your own Echo Show?
Boundless information, music, movies, tv shows, videos, health tips & news, entertainment news, national news, local news, sports news & recaps, weather, timer, alarm, reminders, Amazon delivery notifications, alerts, security camera connection . . . and food, food, food, all on an interactive screen {some connect to Prime}.
You can browse all the styles here on this Amazon page
Cocktail Hour Buzz 
Sundowner snacks, drinks, talk – whether for a crew, or for two, or just for you
♦ I’ve been fascinated with Ferran Adria, motive force of the iconic El Bulli named World’s Best five times, ever since a long ago profile in Esquire. I couldn’t even begin to wrap my mind around having him attend one of our live Salons. The good news is, the fact that we have to link to this wondrous interview from Epicurious on our online get-together instead means we can all enjoy his extraordinary take on food, cooking, and life.
– I want to note that I did have the extreme pleasure of meeting his brother Albert, who needs to be acknowledged for all the behind the curtain work he did and does in the duo’s sideways-thinking, laboratory-intensive approach to what goes on the plate and how it’s to be enjoyed.
♦ Must love anchovies. Don’t? Move along, nothing to see here. Do? Then you’re going to love these throwback 
cocktail hour snacks – Anchovy Toasts, with 8 filets of the fishies minced into 4 oz gruyere, 1/2 c mayo & 4 T parm, on buttered toast, sprinkled with paprika, 5 min at 450F. From Playboy’s Host & Bar Book, originally featured in our 09.04.20 Salon on Amazon. For whatever molecularly-inspired reason {oops, some Adria sneaked in}, these go so very well with nicy, icy martinis.
♦ More foodie chat in the Salon. These veggie sculptures are just so cool, and really we could do many of these ourselves for our plates or platters or table. Take a veggie, take a knife, and go! Now since cyber stuff and I are not always bffs, this is likely going to be a two-step thing. When you click the link for the video the download will probably show in your lower task bar, and will say Done xxx. Just click the up arrow and then Open.
– Note that this forwarded MP4 has been safety-checked by Avast. Our CS contributor, Patti Tripp of Las Vegas, says she would try it, but “I am the one who stuck her hand in a moving blender, so attempting this with a knife is, well, not the best or safest of ideas.”
♦ Be sure to see the recipe link above in the Alexa section for Pizza Tots.
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squash with Indian spices, baked butternut squash with cheese polenta, winter squash with gruyere gratin, savory ricotta squash tart, acorn squash saltimbocca. {thanks to 
how many 
another way I like to use that pan, and that’s to freeze {covered} individual portions of various items, in the case here cooked macaroni. Also good for rice, cooked shrimp, stuffing, frozen veggies, cooked veggies, e.g. Just be sure to treat the cups with non-stick spray so the food can be popped out and into a freezer bag. 
And so I was drawn magnet-style to this quesadilla {OK, the bacon helped}. That bacon plus homemade hash browns join onion and peppers and cheese in a tasty tortilla stack, topped with a nice fried egg, fresh tomato salsa, and chopped chives.
tastes and textures. And some of the combos replace some of the cheese with, e.g., crackers, sausages and jarred items that have a longer shelf life. There’s a huge selection on Amazon and you can narrow your search to find one that’s just right. 
adding some crunchy magic to veggie salad and potato soup. In the linked Food Network recipe the 
croutons actually top a smooth sweet potato parsnip soup. 
pretty traditional in this dish. Ree Drummond achieves that nicely with roasted red peppers and sliced pepperoncini.
{shown}. For the rest I reached back through the decades for a impromptu version of a dish called Welsh rarebit, melty on toast with a sprinkling of crisp bacon. Sliced tomatoes good with 
this. 
frosting, topped with a kind of ganache where the cream is replaced by butter. Indulgent!
Strain over rocks in prechilled old-fashioned glass.” And it does call this drink “extremely light.” Cheers!
ideas for turning food into edible Halloween decorations – pumpkin sherbet bowls, vampire donuts, apple monster mouths, banana mummies, candy infused vodka, so much more. 
talking Oreos, joining candies and icing in a 
waffles, nice and crispy, filled with chocolate frosting and peanut butter. The fruit 😁 makes all the guilt go away. 
bodies. In the course of dealing with family, juggling two men, and going where angels dare to tread, main character Hannah {Alison Sweeney} takes us into her Cookie Jar Cafe & Bakery, the front of the house for community interactions and, more to our point, the kitchen for spoonfuls of baking technique and culinary history along with teasing glances of fabulous baked goods. The link takes you to the series page on Amazon.