July 2010

He Said, She Said: Kevin Roberts and Elizabeth Karmel Go Grill Crazy!

July 30, 2010 at 12:21 pm, by dporrino

They say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but does the same apply to mouth-watering meals? Apparently not! Kevin Roberts’ recipe for Cheesy Buffalo Chicken Dip and Elizabeth Karmel’s recipe for Salt-Crusted Shrimp with Potent Lemon-Garlic Dipping Sauce both sound equally delicious.

Author of two cookbooks, owner of four sports bars in San Diego, and nationally known radio and TV food guru, Kevin Roberts knows just what to add to make a delicious little snack.

A prestigious Southern food expert and Executive Chef at the Hill Country Barbecue Market, Elizabeth Karmel puts a kick on ordinary recipes and leaves you craving more. Don’t miss the free download of her guide to grilling: St. Francis Girls’ Guide to Grilling.

Now it’s up to you to decide! Will you opt for what he said or what she said? Why not try both recipes?

Kevin Robert’s Cheesy Buffalo Chicken Dip

Ingredients:
1 8-ounce package cream cheese
1/2 cup blue cheese salad dressing
1/2 cup Buffalo Wing Sauce Frank’s RedHot preferred
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese or shredded mozzarella cheese

The Steps:
Heat oven to 350ºF. Place cream cheese into deep dish 9-inch pie plate. Microwave 1 minute to soften. Whisk in salad dressing, Buffalo Wing Sauce and cheese until smooth. Stir in chicken.
Bake 20 minutes or until mixture is heated through. Stir well. Garnish as desired. Serve with crackers or cut up vegetables.
Makes 3 cups spread (about 12 servings)

Microwave Directions:
Prepare as above. Microwave, uncovered, on HIGH 5 minutes until hot, stirring halfway through cooking.

Tip:

For a party buffet table, keep this dip hot in a small crock-pot or fondue pot.

Read more

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Wait for it…The Perfect Summer Dress

July 29, 2010 at 2:20 pm, by Sue Erneta

I saw it in the window and immediately had to go into the store. “It” was a perfect summer dress: thin silk georgette, sleeveless with a soft scoopneck, gathered at the waist and full of lots of little pleats – all in a delicious peachy-melon color. I found it inside, grabbed my size and bee-lined it to the fitting room. I was ready to slip it over my head when I saw the tag: $268. What? In this store? I had guessed it would be maybe $100, maybe $120. But $268? No way. But…I tired it on anyway. That’s my rule: always try it on if you like it. Because 9 times out of 10, it won’t look that great and then you’ve gotten it out of your system and you won’t think about it again. Well, this was that 1 time out of 10. But still, $268 was too much so I managed to put it back and push it out of my head (though truth be told, I have checked the website a few times to see if it had gone on sale!)

Then today I sauntered into Forever 21. I rarely go in and I’ve never bought anything there. I don’t know if it’s the name of the place or the kids that are ripping through the racks but I’ve just never felt comfortable there. Then I saw it: a sleeveless dress with a soft scoopneck, gathered at the waist and full of lots of little pleats – all in a delicious peachy-melon color. It wasn’t exactly the silk georgette of the other one I had tried but it was still pretty. And it was $27.80. Yup – that’s right. Twenty-seven dollars and eighty cents.

I’m wearing it today and I’ve gotten tons of compliments. It’s the perfect summer dress…with the perfect price.

So, tell me…have you held out for a deal and actually found one?
Photo courtesy of Forever 21.

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Food Of The Week: Popcorn, Indiana Bacon Ranch

July 29, 2010 at 12:39 pm, by Tara Bench

Nothing is wrong with popcorn, bacon or ranch dressing.

Thank you Popcorn, Indiana for putting them all together!

The Bacon Ranch popcorn was an office favorite this week. Just the right amount of flavoring made this the perfect savory snack. Now only if our snack drawer had an endless supply!

Get a 6-bag box online at PopcornIndiana.com or grab a bag as you wander around Whole Foods and Bed Bath & Beyond.

Tell us what your favorite flavor is!!

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Keeping Our Brains Young

July 28, 2010 at 10:10 am, by Julie Bain

If I only had a brain!

That’s Mehmet Oz, M.D., above, showing me how different a healthy brain looks and feels compared with a brain that is riddled with Alzheimer’s disease. It was an amazing lesson: the Alzheimer’s brain was stiff and withered while the healthy brain was plump and soft.

It wasn’t the first such lesson I’d had with Dr. Oz. I met him years ago, before he was a TV star and best-selling author of the You health books. He was just a rock-star heart surgeon then. It was a life-changing experience for me to stand on a stool in his OR and watch him perform open-heart surgery on a young woman (I mentioned that in a blog a while back). At other times with him I was lucky enough to compare a healthy artery with one stiff and coated with calcified plaque—a heart attack in the making. I also got to hold a liver and feel the rock-hard, enormous malignant tumor in it. That poor patient didn’t stand a chance.

These were the best kinds of lessons I could get outside of attending medical school. But holding that diseased brain (which took place at a recent small event in New York on how to keep our brains young) really motivated me. That’s a disease I don’t want to get, and I’m sure you don’t, either! The latest research shows that one way to help avoid Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline in general is aerobic exercise. It’s really one of the most important things we can do for ourselves.

I’ve been a little sedentary the past few weeks, since it’s been the hottest summer on record here in New York City. I’ve found myself making excuses for not exercising. But those brains reminded me that there’s no excuse not to get moving and work up a sweat. In fact, studies show that intense exercise can even make your brain grow. Join me in pledging to get moving, and let’s get smarter together!

SEE LHJ’S EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ON TV
Meanwhile, we have a great story in the magazine this month on how to keep your memory sharp. Read it here. And check out our editor-in-chief Sally Lee’s Today Show appearance with Hoda and Kathie Lee by clicking here. She shares some great tips on how to keep your brain young and strong. Don’t forget to try them!

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Sara’s Tech Tips: Back to School for Grownups

July 28, 2010 at 9:29 am, by Ladies' Lounge

Yeah we know it’s not even August yet, but back to school season is right around the corner. (Scary, right?) Back to school isn’t just for the kids in your life. What better time to wake up your brain, get your life organized, or even sign up for those lessons you keep putting off? Here are some sites to help you get started.

Keep Learning
Wordsmith.org – Expand your vocabulary: Sign up for free and you’ll get a word of the day in your inbox. In addition to the definition, you get the usage and an example of the word in a sentence. Can someone say spelling bee without the pressure to perform?

Factropolis.com -  This site is run by a group of teachers and historians who are dedicated to correcting historical “untruths,” sharing old trivia, and generally making all of us smarter and more well-informed (in a super-fun way!). Log on and you can even email the cool ones to family and friends.

Get Organized
Cozi.com or 30boxes.com – Try either of these sites to get the whole family on the same page by creating a shared calendar that allows you to enter birthday reminders, grocery lists, and color coded to-do lists. You can log in from anywhere to see your calendar or go old-school and print a copy for the refrigerator.

GotFamilyGetOrganized.com – Put all of your family’s info in one, easy-to-access place. (You can even include the dog!) From medical records and emergency contacts to school schedules and social events, create a free account that you can access from anywhere. Need the date of your son’s last tetanus shot or the neighbor’s emergency contact info for the babysitter? No more last-minute scrambling.

Chorebuster.net – No more fighting and flipping coins: Chorebuster automatically generates a fair chore schedule for everyone in the household. After entering the people and the chores, as well as the undesirable factor (i.e. cleaning the toilets) and how often the chore should be done, the website makes a schedule and will email it to you daily or weekly without even having to log in.

Set Goals
Pickthebrain.com – This site focuses on motivation, education and self improvement in a fun way. In addition to brain-training games (my personal fave), they also have articles on building self-confidence and training yourself to have good habitss. PickTheBrain will help you make an attainable goal—and reach it!

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Confucius says: “You will never have to spend more than $10 on a bottle of wine again”

July 26, 2010 at 9:42 am, by Tom Claire

That’s what my fortune cookie read when I recently met Nicole Hitchcock, senior winemaker at Turning Leaf, for a sampling of their new releases. Why the fortune cookie? A new Turning Leaf survey on American take-out habits found that nearly twice as many Americans choose Chinese over Italian food for takeout (41% compared with 21%; the runners-up being American take-out, 18%; Mexican, 14%; and Japanese, 4%). Other American habits? Friday night is the most popular take-out evening and more than a third (34%) of respondents in the survey admit to (occasionally?) serving take-out as homemade dishes. And one last fact that’s not hard to fathom is how well the Turning Leaf Pinot Grigio pairs with Chinese food.

“Wine doesn’t need to be reserved for fine dining,” points out Nicole, who developed the food survey to demonstrate not only the casual (and inexpensive) side of dinner but to show off Turning Leaf’s wine selections, most of which retail for from $8 to $10 per bottle.

Now is the perfect time to start experimenting with wine-and-take-out combos: it’s much too hot to cook. Nicole suggests these pairings:
Sauvignon Blanc—Seaweed salad, green curry, broccoli and garlic sauce
Riesling—Pad Thai, chicken tikka masala, spicy tuna rolls
Pinot Noir—Falafel, salmon rolls, tacos
Cabernet Sauvignon—Cheese pizza, meatball heroes, cheeseburgers
White Zinfandel—General Tso’s chicken, rainbow rolls, California rolls
Pinot Grigio—Miso soup, garlic knots, tortilla soup

Happy pairing, everyone!

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Making Travel Easier, One Gadget at a Time

July 22, 2010 at 5:38 pm, by Jennifer Castoro

Just hearing the words “summer vacation” is enough to make you smile, right? Unless of course you’re thinking about all the time you’ve spent packing and unpacking, hunting through your bag for your wallet (where’d you put that thing?) and taking horribly aligned, too-close self-photos while trying to fit in the scenery/people/interesting things behind you. That’s where these pretty nifty travel doodads from Dynomighty come in.

The Bottle Cap Tripod is a pocket-size attachment that screws on to the top of a water bottle for an instant hands-free camera stand. No more balancing your digital on the side of fountains, atop precarious rocks or on rusty railings that are just as likely to obliterate your camera as they are to be useful props. $10 at dynomighty.com

Pickpockets begone! Super-slim Mighty Wallets are cleverly designed to look like random items (like an airmail-envelope inspired option and the one that could pass for a page of newspaper, at right) that thieves would be much less interested in investigating than anything resembling a wallet. They’re also ecofriendly, water-resistant and perfectly pocket-size. There’s more than 45 different designs, too, including some cheeky ones with beach scenes and gorillas. $15 each at dynomighty.com

The colorful Mighty Tote is a seriously lightweight 1.6 ounces, so you can feel free to stuff it full of whatever junk you carry around with you while sightseeing or beaching that you always regret bringing later, after your shoulders hurt. $15 at dynomighty.com

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