Power Of Seven Restaurant's Entree's Menu

Blackened Bottom Fish and Honey Bourbon Pecan Butter with Spicy Cheese Grits 

Smoked Salmon and Jalapeno Mayonnaise with Ginger Chili-Lime Corn off the cob

Baked Lemon Oregano Chicken with Dilled Rice

Ginger-Lime Chicken Breasts with Pasta Alfredo

Paprika Pork with Hungarian Noodles

Garlic Pork with Ginger Dipping Sauce and Bacon Fried Rice 

Sirloin with Blue Cheese Butter & Twice Baked Blue Cheese Potatoes

Crispy Gingered Beef with Smoky Fried Corn cakes

Pesto Prawns with Blue Cheese Ravioli & Pine Nuts

Oysters Sautéed in Garlic Butter and served with Parmesan Spaghetti

Lamb with Sour Cream Caper Sauce & Parsley Potato Pancakes

Ginger-Sesame Rack of Lamb and Grilled Red Potatoes

Chili Stuffed Crepes with Red Rice

Blue Cheese Onion & Walnut Quiche with Ginger & Citrus Dressed Vegetables

Life Is Tough, but not in this case!

My two wolf dogs lounging on "their" couch!

Selling Stuff using Breaking Bad!

When I get played to make me watch commercials it really pisses me off!

When I was watching the newest, and highly advertised, episode of “Breaking Bad” I became very aware of how commercial television shows have become, beyond the immediate and obvious nature of the commercials themselves! Jimmy Kimmel also mentioned that he was pissed off at the very same thing that pissed me off about the obvious trickery that AMC used to try and make us watch their new show in order to see the previews of the next episode of Breaking Bad. I won because I “dvr” every thing I watch and fast forward through the commercials and when they announced that I had to watch part of their new show to see the preview I just fast forwarded until I got to the preview, but just as Jimmy noted, it was a very long time until the first commercial. What a bunch of crap! I feel the same as Jimmy, I already hate this new show based on the slimy tactics that AMC practiced, I taped the show as I was willing to give it a chance, until I found out they were trying to hold their audience hostage so there is no way in hell I am going to watch it now. How slimy can advertisers be? Pretty f***ing slimy!

Asian Appetizer Meatballs

These are quick and easy and smell really good while they are baking, which is no wonder considering they have garlic, ginger and sesame oil in them! When ever I have a half a bottle of beer left in the refrigerator I always put it in a jar and save it for adding to meatloaf and clear sauces for meat instead of water when it is called for, like in the case of these meatballs. If you have ginger water it is the perfect substitute for the beer (or water) and you don’t need to use grated ginger as the water permeates the meatballs better than the grated (or dry if you don’t have any fresh ginger-though since you can easily freeze a piece of peeled ginger root and take it out and grate a little when you need it there is no excuse for not having fresh ginger around).

1 tablespoon sherry
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 cup beer or water
1 clove minced garlic
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound ground pork or chicken

1. In a bowl combine sherry, soy sauce, sesame oil, water, garlic and ginger. Add ground meat and mix lightly. Form into 1 inch balls and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes. Serve with dipping sauce if desired though as savory as these meatballs are they work well with a very minimalist dip, like a simple hot and sour sauce made with some rice vinegar, hot chili oil and sesame seeds watered down a little to the desired amount of hot and sour.

Food, the eating and the cooking of it, I love both!

I have been eating good food since I was a little kid and have been cooking since I was about 13 years old. My mother was a good cook, not a great cook but she cooked a good variety of all kinds of food and did a decent job of it. I was always interested in the food we had for dinner and learned to help, and then to cook the whole meal, from a fairly young age. I never thought that the food we had was exotic but when I went over to my girlfriend’s houses for dinner and had some really very boring meals of tomato sauce spaghetti (with no Italian spices) I started to realize than my mother had exposed me to a decent range of ingredients of spices and kinds of food.  When I was 13 I have entries in my dairy about cooking spareribs and corn on the cob from our garden for our family dinner so since I am now 56 that means I have been cooking for over 40 years. My dad used to bartend at the Elk’s club on Friday or Saturday nights (I am not sure why other than he liked it since I don’t think it paid much and he had a full time job for with the local power company as a meter reader which I think paid fairly well)  when I was a kid, which I have some funny stories about, and he would bring home the leftover crab they had for the Friday night specials and I remember not that many of my friends ever had crab. I remember taking a brown bag lunch to school by my preference when I was in grade school because I thought the food they served in the lunch room was terrible, and so did a lot of other kids. They served plain boiled navy beans with catsup (the only beans we ever had at home were black eyed peas and ham hocks, this was partly because dad had been in the navy and he pretty much hated almost all beans except for black eyed peas and green beans because he said they had to eat a lot of beans), “bologna boats” which were a fried piece of bologna (my mother never bought bologna, salami but no bologna) with a scoop of instant mashed potatoes on top with a piece of American cheese food on top “Yumm- ugh!”, instant mashed potatoes with gravy (I was used to real mashed potatoes with real turkey and gravy) so it was no wonder I was thrilled to have a half a tuna sandwich with a cup of “campbell’s soup” in a thermos for my lunch. As I got older I started collecting recipes, some of them were very time consuming and intricate to make but as I got older and had to work 8 hours a day I started cooking easier things that still had lots of flavor and that is the principal guiding light to the recipes I love to cook now. I had a boyfriend who loved my cooking and had me teach him some of his favorite dishes and he always used to love it when I would tell him that something he liked was so easy that “even he could make it”! That is what I strive for in the recipes I share with other people, make then really flavorful and fun and easy to make, there really isn’t any reason cooking has to be complicated. Yes “even you” can make it is my motto. I do have to say I subscribe to the axiom my favorite “5 star” restaurant subscribes to, “if you are making blue cheese dressing then it should taste like blue cheese and if it says garlic anything you will be able to taste the garlic!” I can’t stand it when a thing is advertised as “garlic” and you can’t even tell they used any, if you don’t want garlic chicken then you shouldn’t order it! I have always said there are only 2 foods (and one is not a food as far as I am concerned and the other barely is) that I don’t like and the first one is jello – colored sugared gelatin is not food and is not natural – and the second one is slugs, oh I mean snails, and yes I have had them slathered in garlic and the dish was good but only because the rubberized snails tasted like garlic rubber! So that being said I wouldn’t say I am a picky eater, so I hope you enjoy my recipes and happy eating and cooking!

Sweet & Sour Gingered Beef

If you haven’t made candied ginger and syrup yet it is worth it just to be able to make this recipe. If you don’t have the home made ginger you can buy it and the ginger syrup at the oriental market, but it will cost you more than the $1.98 it costs to make you own.

1 pound sirloin, cut into ½” squares

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 tablespoon water

1 egg yolk

½ cup cornstarch

¼ cup peanut oil

2 tablespoon sesame oil

4 cloves of minced garlic

½ cup shredded carrots

¼ cup minced candied ginger

¼ cup ginger syrup

2 tablespoons soy sauce

¼ cup rice vinegar

1 tablespoon orange juice

2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

¼ cup minced green onions

Place cut up beef in a bowl and mix with the tablespoon each of soy, cornstarch and water and let marinate about 30 minutes. Remove beef from bowl and dredge both sides in cornstarch. Heat up peanut oil and fry beef until browned and crispy on one side and then turn it over and do the same for the other side. You will probably need to cook the beef in two batches unless you have a really big skillet, just make sure you don’t over crowd the meat while browning. Remove beef from pan and place on paper towels and drain oil and wipe cornstarch out of it. Add sesame oil to the pan and sauté the garlic and carrots for a couple of minutes. Then add the minced candied ginger and ginger syrup, soy sauce, vinegar, orange juice and red pepper flakes. Cook this sweet and sour syrup for several minutes until the flavors meld well and add the beef back to the sauce and briefly reheat the beef and pour onto a platter and top with green onions. Leave the lovely bits of minced garlic and ginger in the sauce. Serve with steamed rice and broccoli to mix in with the sauce, if you like it like I do!

Asparagus With Chardonnay Bernaise

1 pound asparagus 

1 quart water
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup chardonnay wine
1/3 cup butter
1 minced green onion
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon minced parsley
1 tablespoon minced tarragon
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

1. Break asparagus into pieces and discard the tough ends. Bring water to a boil and add salt and asparagus. Cook for about 5 to 10 minutes until asparagus is just tender. Drain and serve with the sauce.

2. Chardonnay Bernaise: Briefly cook onion in the butter in a small saucepan and add wine wine and cook until the wine is reduced by half. Remove from heat and whisk in egg yolks until sauce is slightly thickened. Add the parsley, tarragon, salt and pepper and serve over the asparagus.