Some say Tomato...

I'm blessed this year with a bountiful tomato harvest.














First the Early Girl and Sweet 100's were ripening.














Now the Celebrity plants are loaded, too.  The smaller three here are Early Girls.

Some of the Celebrities are huge; check out the size of the biggest one on this plate!

 

Nothing beats fresh sliced tomatoes.  These were garnished with fresh garden basil, shredded Parmesan cheese, and olive oil.

The easiest preserving I've done (hat tip to Lavelle) is to fill the large or medium round mold with sliced tomatoes seasoned with

• DAH Sel Gris Sea Salt
• Garlic
• DAH Rosemary, Basil, and Thyme Herb Blend
• Drizzle of olive oil 

and bake at 375° for about an hour and a half, until the desired consistency is reached.  I have learned to crush the salt and herbs in the mortar and pestle and add them when the mold is about half full, but drizzle the olive oil over the top.

The cooked down tomatoes are cooled and frozen in the round tray and then stored in plastic bags for one-cup additions to chili, soups, or pasta sauces and dishes. I generally get 4+ cups from the medium round mold and 6 cups from the large round mold.

Alternatively, I have baked home-grown peppers, tomatoes, and basil with just salt and oil.

My treat is to take one portion or the less-than-a-cup left over while it is still hot, put it in a Bullet serving glass, and puree it to a smooth soup.  YUM!!

No matter how you say "tomato," nothing tops the taste of a vine-ripened tomato from the garden!

Quick and Easy Fajitas

I didn't want to cook the other night, so I decided to see if I could make fajitas in the microwave. This was so simple!

1. I had some rare roast beef, so I cut it in strips and layered it in the bottom of the oval mold.
2. Than I ut up:
   1/2 red pepper
   1/2 yellow pepper
   1/2 Walla Walla sweet onion
3. Layered the veggies on top of the meat
4. Seasoned with DAH Green Onion and Roasted Pepper Savory Herb Blend
5. Covered the mold with the Octagonal Silpat®
6. Microwaved on high for 3 minutes
   

Preserving Garden Goodness: Freezing Zucchini and Squash

If your garden is like mine, you are not keeping up with the yield of zucchini and squash and your friends and neighbors are starting to lock their doors. Here is a simple way to extend the goodness of fresh veggies past the season for use in winter recipes.





Clean and dry the squash and cut it up into pieces that will easily chop in your food processor. Pulse just until large pieces are all chopped.

Press chopped zucchini into round tray (1 cup) wells and freeze.  The muffin trays work for 1/2 cup portions.



Then just pop the "hockey pucks" out and put them into a freezer bag.

Wallah... you've got premeasured chopped zucchini for winter soups and breads. So simple and nutritious!

Preserving Garden Goodness: Basilcicles

My garden adventure this year is turning out so well that I can't keep up with the bounty. One of the things I heard at our Demarle at Home Convention last week was the idea of freezing fresh basil. Freezing even small portions is a breeze with Demarle's nonstick trays, so I was eager to try this.

How do you know when it's time to harvest your basil and freeze it? When the plant starts going to seed, cut the entire plant off at the roots (or uproot) it, spritz it well with 1:1 vinegar/water, trim all the leaves off into a colander, eliminating the stems, and soak wash them to remove all debris, just as you would wash berries. I use a cold water-bath in a stainless bowl that fits the colander. Submerge the colander, and the debis will float to the top where it can be washed over the sides. Basil leaves are very light, so this is a bit tricky, but not unmanageable.

The steps of the process:

Wash basil leaves and trim away stems and any bad parts of the leaves.

Dry basil leaves in a salad spinner and/or pat dry. The Silpat® works well as a base for this.

Fill a food processor with fresh leaves, and add just enough good-quality olive oil to coat leaves. This keeps the basil from turning black.

Pulse until all leaves are uniformly chopped. Add oil as needed to make a very coarse paste.

Put the flexi-tray of choice on the medium PBS. I used the mini tartlet tray (1/2 oz). The petit four tray (3/8 oz) makes more, but smaller, portions at one time. You could also use the mini muffin tray and not fill wells completely.

Scrape the basil mixture out out of the food processor with a spatula; fill the wells with the paste, and press down to compact the paste.

Put in the freezer until solid.

Remove tray from freezer, unmold individual "basilcicles," and store in a freezer bag. Mine fit nicely into a quart bag. This will stack easily on my produce freezer shelf.

Look forward to taking out a "basilcicle" to season pasta dishes, soups, and more with fresh-frozen basil this winter!

Special Offer

Special Offer for Free Flexipat®
July 1 - July 15

Host a Cooking Workshop with sales of $500 or more
on my premium dates
OR

Refer someone who becomes
a qualified member of my team

RECEIVE A FREE FLEXIPAT®
$58.27 value
in addition to the July Hostess specials!!

If you'd like to invite some friends over for a fun too-hot-to-cook workshop or know someone who'd like to explore the option earning income on their own schedule,

email me at kristiwathome@gmail.com 

or call me at 360-254-2952

Fun With Pastry Cutters

I prepared tiny treats for my Bunco group last tonight. I created a Mexican-themed canape and made the strawberry chocolate tartlets from our Desserts cookbook. Both are best served within half an hour of preparation, but are good cold.

First, I thought it would be fun to make canapes with corn tortillas (gluten-free) using the scalloped pastry cutter.  I started with standard unbaked corn tortillas.

I was able to get 4 cutouts from each tortilla. Yes, there was waste, but at a little over $2 for the entire package of tortillas, using 7-8 for this purpose wasn't expensive. And, my dogs were thrilled with the leftover treats. 

I laid them over the back of the mini-tartlet tray and baked them for 10 minutes at 350°. I thought they might  mold around the shape of the tray as they got warm. They did not, so next time I will just do them on the Silpat®.

I chopped about a third of an onion in the food processor, added a can of partially drained black beans, and pulsed until it was creamy (You could use any bean dip). After arranging the mini-tortillas on a Silpat®, I put about a teaspoon full of bean dip on each mini-tortilla and topped it with shredded cheddar and cojack cheese (Any prepackaged Mexican mix would work). I popped them back into the oven until the cheese melted. In the interim, I finely chopped a tomato by hand for the garnish. 

Best served popping hot out of the oven.

The trick to preparing the Strawberry Chocolate Tartlets is to make them uniform. The recipe calls for mid-size berries. If you've noticed, mid-sized strawberries are hard to find unless you pick your own or have a huge number from which to select. Long into the process, I discovered that if you cut off enough of the large berry, it will work just fine. It also leaves you with leftover sliced berries for your cereal in the morning :)  Since many in my Bunco group avoid caffeine late in the day, I made some without the chocolate chips. 

The process is straightforward. After cutting the pastry shapes and putting them into the mini-tartlet tray, cut the stem end of the strawberries, dip the end in sugar, and put them into the shells sugar-side down. Add 3 (or more!) chocolate chips to each. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes.  

Allow to cool a bit before serving.

© 2011 Kristi B. Weber, Independent Representative, Demarle at Home. All Rights Reserved

Healthy Choices

I usually post recipes, amazing monthly specials, or tips about product use. Today I want to highlight my last Demarle Host family. Jenn and Trey Bonner are health coaches with TSFL, a physician-endorsed weight loss program that promotes lifestyle change along with a diet regimen. After losing an amazing 187/110 pounds on a journey that started almost two years ago, Jenn and her husband Trey now dub themselves "Half the couple." They are passionate about helping others take the same path they chose toward a healthy lifestyle.

Because Jenn and Trey have come to focus on making healthy eating choices, they avoid junk foods, shop for fresh veggies, and were eager to hear about non-stick Demarle products that do not interact with food during the cooking process. We used my Demarle products to prepare a salmon dinner at their house. They were amazed at the flavor of food prepared in Kosher-certified pans and the easy clean up afterward. The vibrant green broccoli prepared in the microwave with no water added was also a big hit.

Photo Credit: L Wallace

When Jenn unmolded the mandarin orange cake from the Sunflower mold, she said, "That doesn't look real!"  I laughed and asked her what she meant. "It looks like food that's been sprayed for filming a commercial," she said. The carmelized sugar sheen of baked goods in Demarle's "chef's secret" is almost too good to be true. 

Trey fell in love with the DD stainless that has no brads on the interior cooking surface to catch food and harbor germs.

This weekend, Jenn hosted her own Demarle Party and invited others who are on the quest for health to discover the Demarle Difference.

Six-year-old Ava insisted on helping fill the square savarin tray with turkey meatloaf. This is exactly what Demarle does best—

bring families back to the kitchen for easy, healthy meals.

Trey ordered his DD stainless with the May Stainless Extravaganza Special offering a 58% discount on the combined sets. Jenn is excited about getting the knives that are included with the sets.

Their hostess rewards will get them started with an array of Demarle Flexipans®, Flexitrays®, and Silpats®.

The day after the party, Jenn emailed me to say:

Kristi,

I am getting ready to cook lunch and my first thought was “I can’t wait to get my Demarle products!”

Trey and Jenn will be hosting another party soon for those who could not come to this one.

It is a thrill to walk alongside these champions of healthy living with the value that Demarle at Home brings to families.

Salmon Bake

I often use my Demarle Flexipat® to bake meat entrees and roast veggie side dishes at the same time. Fish, chicken, pork chops, even ground meats can be cooked alongside a favorite selection of veggies. This week I chose to do Salmon with lemon and dill and a veggie mix with Herbs de Provence.

 

 

Nothing could be simpler. Toss the veggies in 1/8 C. oil (I prefer grape seed oil) and about 1 T. of spice. Rub the meat with a bit of oil and whatever spices fit the bill, and bake both at 375° for 15-20 minutes. The salmon should flake apart.

And the clean-up is a breeze. I do not miss cleaning the grill pan. 

Both reheat well as leftovers, too.

Fruit Pizza

The birthday girl requested a fruit pizza with strawberries, kiwi, pineapple, and mandarin oranges:

The basic recipe is found on page 55 of our Desserts cookbook. I made the glaze with the juice from the canned mandarin and pineapple.

Fruit Pizza

Crust:

Sugar cookie dough of choice: prepackaged, mix, or homemade.

Preheat oven to 350°

Place Flexipat on medium PBS
Prepare cookie dough per instructions and press into Flexipat

Bake per recipe or package instructions

Allow to cool completely

Topping:

1 pkg cream cheese

5 oz vanilla yogurt

½ t vanilla

2 t lemon zest (juice the lemon for glaze)

Assorted fruit of choice

Blend all but fruit in mixing bowl until smooth.

Spread mixture over cookie crust.

Cut up fruit and decorate top of pizza.

Glaze:

½ C white sugar

1 T cornstarch

Pinch of salt

¾ C fruit juice

2 T lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a small DD saucepan. 

Bring to a boil over medium heat and cook 1-2 minutes until thickened.

Remove from heat and allow to cool, but not set up.

Spoon over fruit.

Chill pizza for 2 hours.

Cut into servings with plastic cake server.

Enjoy!

What's Not to Like?

Demarle's line of unique, flexible, nonstick bake ware is made with a patented process using woven glass coated with food-grade silicone. Combined with the Demarle perforated baking sheet, it cooks evenly, quickly, and beautifully. No one has duplicated the process, though you may have used some products that have tried to do so. 

You may not own Demarle, but you've eaten food prepared in it. Subway bakes bread in Demarle trays. Cheesecake Factory uses the large round mold to make their cheesecakes. Demarle comes with the kit in culinary schools and is used in Five-Star restaurants everywhere.

Top 10 reasons that I am sold on Demarle:

1.      People who own it, LOVE IT! When I ask my new customers how they like their Demarle, the response is an enthusiastic "I LOVE IT!"

2.      It is truly the "chef's secret." For over 40 years, chefs around the world have been baking with it. Only recently has it been available in the USA for use in our family kitchens. 

3.      It is the healthiest way to cook that I know:

·         The food-grade silicone is completely inert. No chemicals leach into your food. That cannot be said for coated nonstick cooking pans or bake ware, plastic storage containers that are reheated in the microwave, and packages that hold microwave popcorn. Annual Kosher certification verifies that claim.

·         The nonstick properties eliminate calories (keep reading).

4.      It is completely nonstick. Cooking and clean-up are a breeze.

·         Never use oil, spray, or flour again to coat your pans! Can you imagine never having to work to clean up a Bundt pan?

·         Baked-on spills come off easily so your Demarle continues to look brand new.

·         Never soak another pan— for an hour or a day. Quick clean-up in warm, soapy water. Casseroles, lasagna, and cheese/egg dishes come out of the pans with ease.

·         Never fill up your dish drainer with Flexipans^® or Flexitrays^® to dry for hours because water doesn't stick to them, either. Simply shake them dry.

·         The Roupat^® allows you to roll out pastry without using flour.

5.      Originally designed for bakeries in France, it makes you look like a pro.

·   The nonstick properties and even cooking caramelizes the sugar in baked goods, creating a coating on cakes that is to die for. You no longer need to cover up a cake with frosting to make it look appetizing. Save calories, too!

6.      It has unrivaled versatility.

·         Use the same pan to bake a roast, make microwave popcorn, bake a cheesecake, bake a cake, and bake lasagna or a casserole. Clean out your cupboards!

·         It tolerates -40° to 480° for use in the freezer, oven, or microwave.

7.      Proportional sizes create portion control and unique storage options.

·         Prepare desserts and dishes in the Flexitrays^® to create pre-measured portions.

·         Freeze leftovers (see hockey puck soup) in individual portions for later use.

8.      It is completely guaranteed as long as you follow the guidelines for care.

·         30-day money-back guarantee

·         2-year warranty on Silpats^®

·         Life-time guarantee on Flexipans^® and Flexitrays^®

9.      Care guidelines are easy to follow.

·         Demarle flexiproducts cannot be used with direct heat sources such as a stove-top burner or grill and cannot touch the sides of the oven.

·         You cannot use a knife or metal to cut or serve food because it can pierce the silicone. Food easily slides off the Silpats^® or Flexipats^® or unmolds from the Flexitrays and molds.

·         You cannot stack heavy items on top of Demarle bakeware because it can cause creases that break the woven glass structure. You can, however, roll them up and store them in ⅓ the space of rigid bakeware.

·         Flexi-products are not dishwasher safe. They wash up quickly in hot, soapy water and shake dry.

10.  The ease of cooking with Demarle lets you enjoy cooking, even if you hate to cook.

·         My customers who hate to cook find the ease of cooking and cleanup makes their time in the kitchen more enjoyable.

·         Those who love to cook spend even more time creating healthy meals and beautiful baked goods for their family and friends.  

You have to see Demarle products to believe them.  

Schedule a no-obligation demonstration with me!

Hockey Puck Soup

I love to make home-made soup, especially during the winter months. Not only does it warm my tummy after filling the house with tempting aromas, there is much to share or save for later. True comfort food. One of the things that sold me on Demarle products was the idea of  freezing leftovers in the trays, and then storing them in freezer bags. It is so much healthier than using plastic ware that leeches chemicals into foods upon reheating. My favorite is the Round Tray, which holds six 8-ounce portions. The frozen bricks resemble hockey pucks, hence the nickname "hockey puck" soup.

Here's how you do it:

1. Place Flexipat tray of choice on the medium perforated baking sheet.
2. Fill wells with soup.   
3. Cover with the medium Silpat®
4. Place in freezer until portions freeze.
5. Remove from freezer and uncover.
6. Immediately pop out the frozen hockey pucks and place in a freezer bag.
7. Store hockey pucks in freezer.

To reheat, microwave a hockey puck in a bowl covered by the octagonal Silpat® or warm in DD stainless on your stove top over medium-low heat.

Cheesecake Made Easy

Over the holidays, I made my first cheesecake using the large round mold that Cheesecake Factory utilizes to bake their product commercially. It is a little intimidating to imagine that you can peel away the flexi-mold and slide the cheesecake out intact, but you can.

I got this recipe from the internet and modified it, but the result was so tasty that my sister-in-law requested it.  So, I'll share it with you, as well.  The texture is very light for a cheesecake, and the lemon flavor makes for a tart dessert. 

 

Lucious Lemon Cheesecake

Modied from Kaaren Jurack @ allrecipes.com

INGREDIENTS:
CRUST:
1 1/4 cups ginger snaps, finely ground (GF: 1 7-oz pkg Pamela's Ginger Mini Snapz)
3/4 cup finely chopped almonds
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted

FILLING:
4 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs
juice of 2 lemons
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

TOPPING:
2 cups sour cream (I substituted Mountain High Yoghurt)
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon lemon extract
 

DIRECTIONS:

1. Combine crumbs, almonds, and sugar in a bowl; stir in melted butter. Press onto the bottom and about an inch up the sides of the large round mold; set aside. 
2. In a second mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Add eggs one at a time, beating on low speed just until combined. Add lemon juice, lemon peel, and vanilla; beat just until blended. Pour into crust.
3. Bake at 350° F for 60 minutes or until center is almost set. Remove from the oven; let stand for 5 minutes while you combine topping ingredients; spread over filling. Return to the oven for 5 minutes. 
4. Allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
5. Refrigerate overnight. 
6. Remove from mold by peeling the side of the mold down and sliding the cheesecake onto a serving plate.
7. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes before slicing.

 Savor one luscious bite at a time:

 

Discover the Demarle Difference

Whether you are stretching your budget dollars by cooking healthy meals at home or seeking additional income, Demarle at Home offers exceptional value.

There are three great ways to get Demarle at Home products:

Shop my website from the comfort of your home and purchase the items you want. You'll find great values for your kitchen, holiday gift ideas, and welcome stocking stuffers. 
You may need to enter my representative number: US00008839.

Host a rendezvous to earn free products and qualify for a 50% discount. Check out the monthly specials tab to see what you can earn in addition to regular host specials.I'll bring the cooking channel to your home with a workshop on making sweet and savory tartlets or seasonal menus. Invite your friends to do their holiday shopping with you!

Join my team this month for only $99 to immediately begin earning income and product rewards.

Contact me today to learn more!

Explore the tabs above for specifics on our November specials, information about using and caring for your Demarle Products, and recipes tested in Demarle Flexipans and trays.