Generous Helpings Giveaway!

 

 Get ready fort the tastiest Second Harvest Food Bank fundraisers in the year - it is the Generous Helpings Event on Thursday May 15th at 6:00 pm!  This event is at going to beheld at the Nashville Farmer's Market and there will be over 30 restaurants offering tastings, and plenty to drink of all kinds.  Here is the 411 for this event:

Generous Helpings 

Benefiting Second Harvest Food Bank of Middle TN

When:  Thursday May 15th starting at 6:00 pm

Tickets are $50 now ($60 at the door)

Click here to buy tickets now!

Some of the restaurants representing at Generous Helpings are: 312 Pizza Company, 55 South, Amerigo Italian Restaurant, B&C BBQ, Chago's Cantina, Commerce Street Grill/Renaissance Nashville Hotel, Cork & Cow, Etch, Fid,o Holland House, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, Josephine, Kickin' Coffee & Tea, Kohana Japanese Restaurant, Kroger Chef Shoppes ,Legato Gelato, Marche Artisan Foods ,Margot Café & Bar, McConnell House, Midtown Café, Nashville State Community College, Nothing Bundt Cakes, Provence Breads & Café, {PUB}licity, Puckett's, Red Pony, Riff's Fine Street Food, Second Harvest Culinary Arts Center, Sunset Grill, The Mad Platter, The Pied Piper Eatery, The Southern Steak & Oyster, Zumi Sushi Japanese Kitchen, And more to come!

THIS GIVEAWAY I S NOW CLOSED!   TRY AGAIN NEXT YEAR!

2 Generous Helping Tickets Giveaway!

I have a deal for you, I have 2 ticket to give away, and you could win!

You have until Thursday May 8th at 9:00 pm to enter!

There are multiple ways to enter, see below

1.  MANDATORY to enter:  Sign up for Second Harvest's Email  

then EMAIL me at LannaeFood@gmail.com and put in the subject line: Second Harvest Email. 

2. OPTIONAL to enter:  "LIKE"  Second Harvest on Facebook
then EMAIL me at LannaeFood@gmail.com and put in the subject line: Second Harvest on Facebook.

3.  OPTIONAL to enter:  "FOLLOW" Second Harvest on Twitter
then EMAIL me at LannaeFood@gmail.com and put in the subject line: Second Harvest on Twitter.

A winner will be picked at random, GOOD LUCK!

312 Pizza Company 55 South Amerigo Italian Restaurant B&C BBQ Chago's Cantina - See more at: http://secondharvestmidtn.org/generoushelpings/#sthash.eElc7Esq.dpuf

312 Pizza Company 55 South Amerigo Italian Restaurant B&C BBQ Chago's Cantina Commerce Street Grill/Renaissance Nashville Hotel Cork & Cow Etch Fido Holland House Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams Josephine Kickin' Coffee & Tea Kohana Japanese Restaurant Kroger Chef Shoppes Legato Gelato Marche Artisan Foods Margot Café & Bar McConnell House Midtown Café Nashville State Community College Nothing Bundt Cakes Provence Breads & Café {PUB}licity Puckett's Red Pony Riff's Fine Street Food Second Harvest Culinary Arts Center Sunset Grill The Mad Platter The Pied Piper Eatery The Southern Steak & Oyster Zumi Sushi Japanese Kitchen And more to come! - See more at: http://secondharvestmidtn.org/generoushelpings/#sthash.eElc7Esq.dpuf

312 Pizza Company 55 South Amerigo Italian Restaurant B&C BBQ Chago's Cantina Commerce Street Grill/Renaissance Nashville Hotel Cork & Cow Etch Fido Holland House Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams Josephine Kickin' Coffee & Tea Kohana Japanese Restaurant Kroger Chef Shoppes Legato Gelato Marche Artisan Foods Margot Café & Bar McConnell House Midtown Café Nashville State Community College Nothing Bundt Cakes Provence Breads & Café {PUB}licity Puckett's Red Pony Riff's Fine Street Food Second Harvest Culinary Arts Center Sunset Grill The Mad Platter The Pied Piper Eatery The Southern Steak & Oyster Zumi Sushi Japanese Kitchen And more to come! - See more at: http://secondharvestmidtn.org/generoushelpings/#sthash.eElc7Esq.dpuf

312 Pizza Company 55 South Amerigo Italian Restaurant B&C BBQ Chago's Cantina Commerce Street Grill/Renaissance Nashville Hotel Cork & Cow Etch Fido Holland House Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams Josephine Kickin' Coffee & Tea Kohana Japanese Restaurant Kroger Chef Shoppes Legato Gelato Marche Artisan Foods Margot Café & Bar McConnell House Midtown Café Nashville State Community College Nothing Bundt Cakes Provence Breads & Café {PUB}licity Puckett's Red Pony Riff's Fine Street Food Second Harvest Culinary Arts Center Sunset Grill The Mad Platter The Pied Piper Eatery The Southern Steak & Oyster Zumi Sushi Japanese Kitchen And more to come! - See more at: http://secondharvestmidtn.org/generoushelpings/#sthash.eElc7Esq.dpuf

Dining Out for Life April 22

Dining Out for Life, Tuesday April 22, 2014

Salsa

(Nashville's only Authentic Puerto Rican Restaurant)

818 Palmer Ave

Nashville, TN

615-401-9316

 Please come join me for the event Dining Out for Life on Tuesday April 22, 2014 at  the one and only Salsa Restaurant, Nashville's only authentic Puerto Rican restaurant.  All you have to do is eat and drink like you would normally, pay your bill like normal (No Extra Cost!), and Salsa will donate 30% of your total bill to Dining Out for Life!  It is that easy, you do what you  normally do, and Salsa Restaurant does the rest!

I will be at Salsa next week, between 6:30 pm - 9 pm on Tuesday April 22, 2014. Stop by and say hello to me.  Stop in and get a drink at the cool bar. Stop and have dinner with me!  Come yourself, come with friends, enjoy the evening of Puerto Rican cuisine, and know that nearly a third of what you are spending normally is going directly to Dining Out for Life - Nashville Cares.  You can make your reservations by calling Salsa, or by getting onto Open Table.

 Juan Reyes, Executive Chef and Manager of Salsa come from many years at a 5-star restaurant in Puerto Rico.  He decided to pack up his family and bring them to the family oriented Middle Tennessee area, and to lead the way with the first Nashville Puerto Rican restaurant.  Puerto Rican food is not heavily spiced, rather it is a straight forward approach of letting the base ingredients speak for themselves.  The tostones and mofongo are prepared correctly.  Both start out with plantains.  Tostones are twice fried plantain, like a potato is to a Belgian frite.  The very green plantain is cubed and fried 1/2 way, then taken out of the hot oil, smashed into a disk and then allowed to fry to completion.  A little salt is sprinkled on top to finish the tostones. Mofongo also starts out with green plantains, and fried and mashed together to create dish similar to our mashed potatoes, but the plantain has more of a vegetable flavor, and a denser texture.  Mofongo is served as is, not even black pepper sprinkled.  If you want pepper, go ahead and put it on, but Puerto Rican mofongo is a straight forward comfort food that does not traditionally have black pepper in it. 

Popular dishes at Salsa include Carne Frita and the Pastelon de Amarillos.  Carne Frita is pan fried pork with a demi-glace onion sauce with goes quite well with mofongo.  The Pastelon de Amarillos is a Puerto Rican version of a beef and sweet plantain lasagana.  Some of my favorites is the fish sandwich.  The fish is not frozen, and is hand battered and deep fried to order.  I also enjoyed the Ropa Vieja which is a grilled flank steak with savory spices.  What I really like about Puerto Rican food is that it is straight forward letting the ingredients come through, and not weighed down with heavy seasoning, salt or chilies.  
 
Come join me on April 22, 2014 at Salsa for dinner, and enjoy some great Puerto Rican food, while about a third of your dining dollars gets contributed to Dining Out for Life - Nashville Cares.

Dining Out for Life is an annual event in Nashville, and many cities around the USA.  There are 77 participating restaurants in the Nashville area, and these restaurants are pledging to give 30% - 100% of the "take" for the day/evening to Dining Out for Life.  100% of the restaurants contributions the Dining Out for Life event on Tuesday April 22, 2014 will go to Nashville Cares, a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization.  Nashville Cares has been around for almost 30 years, providing support, education, awareness, prevention efforts, and direct services for the community at large, Middle Tennesseans with or friends and family of loved ones with HIV/AIDS.  It is so easy to support Dining Out for Life and Nashville Cares by dining out on Tuesday April 22, 2014.  If you can't make to dinner with me on Tuesday April 22, please consider dining out at one of the other 76 participating restaurants around Nashville.  The Dining Out for Life restaurant list is here.  If you are deciding to dine out the week of April 22nd, please consider dining out on April 22nd at a participating restaurant.

Thank you and bon apetit!

Southern Breakfast

 The Southern Steak and Oyster

150 3rd Ave South

Nashville, TN

615-724-1762

  

 The Southern Steak and Oyster is a hot spot for dinner, but did you know it is also a great place for breakfast too!  Monday through Friday starting at 7:30 a.m., there is breakfast, and I mean really good breakfast.  On the menu are eggs, grits, biscuits, toast, chicken and waffles, omelets, steak and eggs, pancakes, granola, fruit, bacon, sausage and more.  The Nashville Food Bloggers were invited to try some breakfast, and I was so pleasantly surprised.  I had fruit, biscuit, eggs, bacon, grits and coffee for my breakfast.  Everything was cooked they way they should be cooked.  The scrambled  local farm eggs were light, the applewood bacon was just crispy, and  the grits were smooth. 

If it were me coming to Nashville for a conference at the convention center, I would come to the Southern Steak and Oyster for breakfast, and have a proper, civilized, sit-down breakfast.  If it were me, and it could be me, and I need to have a breakfast meeting, I would come to the Southern Steak and Oyster for Breakfast.  There is something for everyone.  A really nice thing about breakfast meetings at the Southern is that there is a lot of parking right next door in the Pinnacle Building's parking garage.  Just park, and get your ticket validated by the hostess.  No fuss-no muss.  It is that easy.  Anyone who has been in Nashville knows that there is only some street parking, 10 min/$0.25, so when you can get free validated parking, it is so worth making plans around the parking.

So, as I did my research, I learned that The Southern Steak and Oyster is owned by the same folks who bought the Loveless Cafe (a breakfast and biscuit icon in Nashville), Saffire (a leading date night restaurant in Franklin) and TomKats Catering  (one of the top caterers in Nashville, and emergency response).  Some years ago the Loveless Cafe was a bet thread bare, and worn out.  TomKats bought the Loveless Cafe and breathed new life into the icon, cleaned it up, and made it a destination again, all the whilst keeping the tradition of the Loveless Cafe we all love and enjoy. Saffire is always a nice place to go for dinner, as it is in the historic Factory in Franklin.  The old Magic Chef stove company building was renovated and re-purposed as cool retail non-mall spot, with Saffire as one of the early restaurants in the building.

And, coming up to join TomKats is Acme Feed and Seed.  It was sad to see Acme Feed and Seed close its doors, as it was the one last holdout downtown to remind Nashville of its rich growing region roots.  Up until the Acme Feed and Seed closed, you could still bring your cat for a free flea dip once per  year! But now, TomKats is going to preserve the Acme Feed and Seed building and re-purpose it into a Broadway 4 option destination.   The 1st floor is going to have a honky tonk bar and food, so regulars and Nashville visitors alike can have a nice lunch in the heart of the city.  The 2nd floor is going to be a place to get signature drink and a place to relax and maybe catch the latest game on TV.  The 3rd floor is going to be event space.  And the best for last, the roof top patio will offer the best views of Broadway, downtown, the Cumberland River, the Stadium and Shelby Street Bridge.  It will be breathtaking and the roof top will be available for functions and rentals.  

I really like the TomKats restaurants so far, and I am looking forward to Acme Feed and Seed. 

Tandy Inspired

City House has been open for 6 years, and for 6 years, Chef/Owner Tandy Wilson has been nominated for the James Beard Best Chef Southeast Award.  Tandy's style is to use as many locally sourced ingredients, use as much of the ingredient as possible and make it delicious, and use some old world techniques to cook food.  One thing I learned from Tandy is that pasta sauce does not have to look like a red tomato sauce out of a jar.  Pasta sauces can be gravy, stew, lemony, veggies without tomato,  and of course tomato. 

Today, I wanted to make a Tandy style pasta sauce and use up ingredients I put up in the freezer or dried from summer and fall.  I dried my organic cayenne, so I pulled one out of the jar.  Last fall, I make herb ice cubes to  use in soups and stews, so I pulled out 2 garlic scape cubes, 2 basil cubes, and 2 scallion cubes.  I froze purple-eyed peas last summer, and pulled them out.  Last summer, I cooked up tomatoes, peppers, onions, and carrots and pureed them into a sauce and put that sauce in quart containers in the freezer, so I pulled out one of those quarts.  I go to Lazzaroli's pasta, and get lots of pasta and freeze it.  I pulled out a box of fettuccine.  I got the 1/2 consumed red wine bottle from earlier in the week.   I pulled out my last sleeve of Emerald Glen pork sausage, made from hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free range hogs.  Emerald Glen sausage was really special because of the type of fat you can only get from foraging hogs.  This may have been the last Emerald Glen sausage because Emerald Glen Farm had to close its sales at the farmer's market due to some family health issues.  I have been hoarding this last sleeve since I bought it from Emerald Glen Farm on their last day of sales.  I had a reminder of how wonderfully savory, meaty, and luscious this sausage is.  I have a couple more servings left, and I will savor every last bite.  One day, I hope family health returns to Emerald Glen, and we can enjoy such lovely sausage again. 

My pasta and pork sauce was so good.  The ingredients were all local, and they all were exceptional in flavor.  I just really enjoyed this dish so much.  Here is the recipe:

Ingredients
1 lb fettuccine (or your preferred pasta)
1 lb pork breakfast sausage (or turkey or chicken breakfast sausage, or soysage)
1 quart tomato (and veggies) sauce
2 ice cubes garlic scapes (or 2 cloves garlic minced)
2 ice cubes scallions (or 2 scallions thinly sliced)
2 ice cubes basil (or big handful basil thinly sliced)
1 heaping cup purple eyed peas (or 1 can black eyed peas rinsed well)
1 cayenne minced (couple shakes of red pepper flakes)
1/2 - 1 cup red wine
salt to taste

Method
1.  In heavy sauce pan, put tomato sauce, garlic, scallions, basil, peas, cayenne and wine over medium heat.  Let come to a stiff simmer (small bubbling).
2.  Saute sausage in a pan until it is crumbled.  If it s fatty, when it is cooked through, drain most of the fat. 
3.  Add the sausage to the sauce, and simmer.
4.  Taste the sauce when it is done,  and then add salt accordingly.
5.  Boil up the pasta to al dente.
6.  Drain the pasta.
7.  Combine the sauce and pasta.
Enjoy!

I just happened to have all these local ingredients, and fresh made pasta on hand, but this dish can be made with conventional foods from the everyday grocery store too.   Tomato sauce (plain in a can) would be awesome in this dish.  I just happened to have frozen some tomato sauce, so I used that.  And, the sausage needs to be a breakfast sausage variety (not Italian flavored), whether it is pork, fowl, or vegan.  There is a local maker of soysage, a breakfast style and it is sold at the Produce Place, that would be good in this dish too, and it would be egg-vegetarian (eggs in the pasta).  I don't make soysage because it is just a lot of work for me, and I can go to the Produce Place and buy a reasonably priced soysage that is already made.  Using Trader Joe's organic brown rice pasta (vegan) and the soysage can make this meal completely vegan.  And, using Trader Joe's organic brown rice pasta is gluten-free, so this dish can be made gluten-free.  This is a versatile recipe for many dietary requirements.  I haven't tried it yet, but I am thinking the sauce would be really good with a large grain like large farro or large quinoa.  I will have to try that sometime.