She also writes about it on her Go Pet Friendly site. So click over and pick up some hard earned knowledge before you set off on that road trip to Grandma's house for the holidays.
She also writes about it on her Go Pet Friendly site. So click over and pick up some hard earned knowledge before you set off on that road trip to Grandma's house for the holidays.
If after our post 'Tis The Season to Make Caponata you made a batch, here are some ideas on how you can turn this pantry item into a meal, a course in a menu, or a snack.
Caponata makes a wonderful opening bite served on bruschetta. Pack it in a mason jar alongside a package of toast and it’s a perfect addition to a picnic or potluck. Guests can spoon out as much or as little as they like. It is a perfect addition to an antipasto tray.
One more choice you have when making this dish is how fine or coarse you chop the ingredients and how long you cook them. Finely cut it can be added to a sandwich as a relish. A chunkier version makes a great side dish. You can also chop the finished product for a specific dish if you want smaller bits.
You can turn caponata into a meal by topping a serving with eggs. You can stuff an omelet, place a poached egg on a bed of caponata, or serve it on toast with hard boiled egg slices.
In the photo above, I cooked up rice and ground turkey then mixed in a good helping of finely chopped caponata as the seasoning for a mixture. I stuffed this into small yummy peppers and baked. They were little bites that we enjoyed for dinner, but they would also be great appetizers.
It can turn a starch base like pasta, rice, or a potato into a meal by mixing it in or topping it with the relish. Top with parmesan or romano cheese, shaved with your trusty vegetable peeler, and you have a luscious plate.
More Riffs on the Caponata Theme
For a great entrée, try mixing it with a good canned tuna in olive oil, or serving on top of a piece of grilled meat or fish.
Caponata gets along well with cheese, so consider a grilled cheese sandwich with the caponata in the sandwich or beside it. You can also add it to a cheese plate.
What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List?
Details:
Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino (Adapted for BostonZest from one of her Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)
If after our post 'Tis The Season to Make Caponata you made a batch, here are some ideas on how you can turn this pantry item into a meal, a course in a menu, or a snack.
Caponata makes a wonderful opening bite served on bruschetta. Pack it in a mason jar alongside a package of toast and it’s a perfect addition to a picnic or potluck. Guests can spoon out as much or as little as they like. It is a perfect addition to an antipasto tray.
One more choice you have when making this dish is how fine or coarse you chop the ingredients and how long you cook them. Finely cut it can be added to a sandwich as a relish. A chunkier version makes a great side dish. You can also chop the finished product for a specific dish if you want smaller bits.
You can turn caponata into a meal by topping a serving with eggs. You can stuff an omelet, place a poached egg on a bed of caponata, or serve it on toast with hard boiled egg slices.
In the photo above, I cooked up rice and ground turkey then mixed in a good helping of finely chopped caponata as the seasoning for a mixture. I stuffed this into small yummy peppers and baked. They were little bites that we enjoyed for dinner, but they would also be great appetizers.
It can turn a starch base like pasta, rice, or a potato into a meal by mixing it in or topping it with the relish. Top with parmesan or romano cheese, shaved with your trusty vegetable peeler, and you have a luscious plate.
More Riffs on the Caponata Theme
For a great entrée, try mixing it with a good canned tuna in olive oil, or serving on top of a piece of grilled meat or fish.
Caponata gets along well with cheese, so consider a grilled cheese sandwich with the caponata in the sandwich or beside it. You can also add it to a cheese plate.
What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List?
Details:
Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino (Adapted for BostonZest from one of her Fresh & Local newspaper columns.)
Bet you have a large collection of photos of your dogs and cats on your phone. We certainly do.
However, I recently reviewed a study on dogs who are doing a lot of licking and it sparked a far more important use of my phone as a way to provide my veterinary team with vital information to help them with a diagnosis.
Take a Video of the Problem
The next time your dog or cat is limping, licking, gagging, or showing any other visible symptom that makes you think about a trip to the vet or a behaviorist, take a video of the symptom or behavior. If you upload the video to an Internet-based site, you can send a link to your vet or play it during your visit.
We all laugh about the number of times a symptom magically disappears when the cat or dog is on the examination table. If that occurs, you can present the video as a part of your report to the doctor.
Take Progressive Photos
In some cases, a close up photo might work better to help you determine if an issue is getting worse or getting better. Taking a photo a day of an injury or problem can be a sure way for you and your vet to assess progress.
We did this recently when Poppy was under treatment for an irritated paw. Each day, after I cleaned and treated her paw, Ed would hold it as open as he could and I’d photograph the area. Looking at the photos together assured us the treatment was working and her paw was healing. You could do the same thing with videos if that works better.
Tips For Photo & Video Communication
Practice your photo video taking skills before you need them.
Set up an online account with services like Google Photos, iCloud, or Youtube and learn how to use them to upload your photos and videos, send links to them by email, and show them on your phone.
If movement is part of the symptom, try to take videos with the animal walking towards you, away from you, and across the screen to give the doctor more points of view.
Create an album for specific ongoing issues. For example, if your dog is showing signs of seasonal allergies with goopy eyes, take photos of them for a few days and after treatment is underway.
Do your best in stressful situations. We don’t know if we would have been great videographers when our first Westie Sassy was having seizures. However, it would have been wonderful to have been able to show the veterinary team exactly what her seizures looked like.
Ask your veterinarian if they would like to be sent a video of a symptom prior to a visit and what they would charge for that type of consultation.
Get to know all of our Sunday Dogs at Boston Dogs.
Thanks to everyone who Hops over to Amazon from here to do their shopping. We appreciate your support.
Bet you have a large collection of photos of your dogs and cats on your phone. We certainly do.
However, I recently reviewed a study on dogs who are doing a lot of licking and it sparked a far more important use of my phone as a way to provide my veterinary team with vital information to help them with a diagnosis.
Take a Video of the Problem
The next time your dog or cat is limping, licking, gagging, or showing any other visible symptom that makes you think about a trip to the vet or a behaviorist, take a video of the symptom or behavior. If you upload the video to an Internet-based site, you can send a link to your vet or play it during your visit.
We all laugh about the number of times a symptom magically disappears when the cat or dog is on the examination table. If that occurs, you can present the video as a part of your report to the doctor.
Take Progressive Photos
In some cases, a close up photo might work better to help you determine if an issue is getting worse or getting better. Taking a photo a day of an injury or problem can be a sure way for you and your vet to assess progress.
We did this recently when Poppy was under treatment for an irritated paw. Each day, after I cleaned and treated her paw, Ed would hold it as open as he could and I’d photograph the area. Looking at the photos together assured us the treatment was working and her paw was healing. You could do the same thing with videos if that works better.
Tips For Photo & Video Communication
Practice your photo video taking skills before you need them.
Set up an online account with services like Google Photos, iCloud, or Youtube and learn how to use them to upload your photos and videos, send links to them by email, and show them on your phone.
If movement is part of the symptom, try to take videos with the animal walking towards you, away from you, and across the screen to give the doctor more points of view.
Create an album for specific ongoing issues. For example, if your dog is showing signs of seasonal allergies with goopy eyes, take photos of them for a few days and after treatment is underway.
Do your best in stressful situations. We don’t know if we would have been great videographers when our first Westie Sassy was having seizures. However, it would have been wonderful to have been able to show the veterinary team exactly what her seizures looked like.
Ask your veterinarian if they would like to be sent a video of a symptom prior to a visit and what they would charge for that type of consultation.
Get to know all of our Sunday Dogs at Boston Dogs.
Thanks to everyone who Hops over to Amazon from here to do their shopping. We appreciate your support.
Today's "Friday Link" post will take you to some of our favorite farmers market toolkit items.
Bring Cash
Ones, fives, tens, and quarters. The farmers will love you, and you'll shop faster! Each year, more stands take credit cards, but they tend to be the ones with higher priced items like meat and specialty foods. And, cash is fast, a bonus for you and your fellow shoppers.
My farmers market cash comes with me in a special accordion credit card wallet. Ones are on one side, fives on the other, with tens and twenties in the card slots. For ease in recognizing denominations, tens are folded in fourths and twenties in thirds. Change is in its separate compartment and my "Market Share" cards are in the outside window.
We love the Sterilite Ultra-Seal Food Storage Containers for transporting food home in our backpacks. They are strong, the seal is tight, they don't leak, and they are lightweight. We prefer glass for long term storage or for any hot food, but these plastic ones are perfect for protecting fragile items.
Remember, a local farmer doesn't grow and pick fruit and vegetables to make them perfect for shipping, they grow and pick them to make them perfectly delicious. You also save the farm the expense of the bags and baskets and help the environment.
We recently discovered and adore these ice sheets. You can wrap this around a product or lay it on top of a bag of items that need refrigeration.
Carry with Ease
We walk to markets and have always used backpacks to lug things home. This season, we decided we needed lighter versions for visits to farmers markets, since we now buy a wider selection of products there than in years past.
For marketing, we are using two of these lightweight Outlander backpacks. Penny likes hers so much that you'll often see her wearing it this summer. Many times, she has the second one tucked inside so, if the day brings on serendipitous shopping, Ed can share the load.
Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a birthday or wedding gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!
Today's "Friday Link" post will take you to some of our favorite farmers market toolkit items.
Bring Cash
Ones, fives, tens, and quarters. The farmers will love you, and you'll shop faster! Each year, more stands take credit cards, but they tend to be the ones with higher priced items like meat and specialty foods. And, cash is fast, a bonus for you and your fellow shoppers.
My farmers market cash comes with me in a special accordion credit card wallet. Ones are on one side, fives on the other, with tens and twenties in the card slots. For ease in recognizing denominations, tens are folded in fourths and twenties in thirds. Change is in its separate compartment and my "Market Share" cards are in the outside window.
We love the Sterilite Ultra-Seal Food Storage Containers for transporting food home in our backpacks. They are strong, the seal is tight, they don't leak, and they are lightweight. We prefer glass for long term storage or for any hot food, but these plastic ones are perfect for protecting fragile items.
Remember, a local farmer doesn't grow and pick fruit and vegetables to make them perfect for shipping, they grow and pick them to make them perfectly delicious. You also save the farm the expense of the bags and baskets and help the environment.
We recently discovered and adore these ice sheets. You can wrap this around a product or lay it on top of a bag of items that need refrigeration.
Carry with Ease
We walk to markets and have always used backpacks to lug things home. This season, we decided we needed lighter versions for visits to farmers markets, since we now buy a wider selection of products there than in years past.
For marketing, we are using two of these lightweight Outlander backpacks. Penny likes hers so much that you'll often see her wearing it this summer. Many times, she has the second one tucked inside so, if the day brings on serendipitous shopping, Ed can share the load.
Do you have an Amazon Gift Certificate to use? Or do you need to buy one for a birthday or wedding gift? Remember to click over to Amazon from here to support this site!
Keeping loaves of artisan bread fresh for more than one day can take some thinking.
We cut our bread from the middle of the loaf to keep the sliced surfaces from drying out. It works!
Before returning the loaf to its bag, we use an elastic to hold the two cut surfaces together. Here's a link to great oversize elastic bands that we use in so many ways.
We also wrap the bread in a clean flour sack dish towel. (These are also Ed's favorite towels for drying wine glasses.)
This system keeps the bread fresh as we make our way to the small crusts on the end. These often wind up toasted as croutons in salads.
You may have seen this tip before. This is an update of a post we did in 2008. We were chatting with another bread-a-holic recently and she loved this idea when we shared it. That inspired us to refresh and republish the information.
Keeping loaves of artisan bread fresh for more than one day can take some thinking.
We cut our bread from the middle of the loaf to keep the sliced surfaces from drying out. It works!
Before returning the loaf to its bag, we use an elastic to hold the two cut surfaces together. Here's a link to great oversize elastic bands that we use in so many ways.
We also wrap the bread in a clean flour sack dish towel. (These are also Ed's favorite towels for drying wine glasses.)
This system keeps the bread fresh as we make our way to the small crusts on the end. These often wind up toasted as croutons in salads.
You may have seen this tip before. This is an update of a post we did in 2008. We were chatting with another bread-a-holic recently and she loved this idea when we shared it. That inspired us to refresh and republish the information.
alongside a package of toast and it’s a perfect addition to a picnic or potluck. Guests can spoon out as much or as little as they like. It is a perfect addition to an antipasto tray.
, and you have a luscious plate.
from here to support this site!