Vera gives you some ideas of what recipes you can make during the hustle and bustle of the holidays.
Featured Recipes: Mandarin Tossed Salad, Spaghetti and Clam Sauce, Chocolate Delight, Cheesy Artichoke Toast
Hey everybody I’m Vera Stewart and welcome to the very Vera show you know this time of year with all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season whether you’re shopping or entertaining we need quick meals to keep us from going through drive-thru restaurants so I’ve got some great ideas for you today that
Will start with keeping things in your pantry and in your refrigerator that will allow you to make these recipes in a moment’s notice so we’re going to start with the Mandarin toss salad this is a recipe from the 70s I remember the girl that gave it to me in carsville
Georgia it’s crisp it’s light the Citrus is amazing and the vinegarette dressing that goes on top you can keep in the refrigerator for a month it’s delicious then we’re going to do spaghetti and clam sauce this is a childhood favorite of mine and you know I always felt like
It was so fancy but you know what all of these ingredients are very easy to keep on hand and you could wow a guest or two at your home with this recipe as well and then we’ll do chocolate delight this is one of the all-time favorite dessert
Recipes of the 70 it was the biggest hit and it kind of went away for a while well we’ve brought it back with our new cookbook and I think you’re going to love it and then finally what about a Cheesy artichoke toast perfect with a bowl of vegetable soup or a salad so
We’ve got a lot to do today let’s get started on that Mandarin TOS salad all right so this is the Mandarin toss salad this is a recipe that was given to me in the 70s in Carterville Georgia and we used to do supper club and everybody was trying to outdo the
Other person if it was your turn to hose so Kathy absolutely nailed it with this salad because I am still using it and that was a long time ago all right so you start with iceberg lettuce and most everybody in the house loves iceberg lettuce so you just want to tear it
Whether it’s with your hands or with a knife so I’ve got about a half a head to a head depending on how big the head of lettuce is now this is where your pantry comes in handy because these are Mandarin oranges so you can always have
A can of those in your pantry if you have grandchild I’m sure you already have a lot of those in your pantry then this is chopped up Celery and again I think I mentioned at the beginning that this is nice and crispy it’s just a really good crunchy
Salad and then spring onions or scallions and this just colorful wise is so pretty and you know there’s no Rhyme or Reason to how much of anything you put in it you could add crains you can add whatever you want want but this is just the original recipe so at this
Point you would not dress it until it’s time to serve it but let me talk to you about this dressing all right so I’m going to use just a small jar to do it you can use a cruit you can also double or triple this recipe cuz it lasts for a
Long time so I’m going to start with my vegetable oil and my red wine vinegar and you know I have substituted balsamic before and it worked really well also okay then sugar and salt and pepper so I just I love the color of this dressing um as well and like I said it’s
Just this is so light you know you almost think about it only in the spring but this is good all the time and it’s just going to go over the top of the of the salad and you know the focus today is keeping things in your pantry and in
Your refrigerator that will last a while so you can make something at the last minute celery lasts for a while if you keep it in your crisper the spring onions do as well the Mandarin oranges are in your pantry and I think you’ve got everything in your cabinet to make
This dressing so if you want to make this a whole meal don’t forget the fresh market always has rotisserie chicken grilled chicken slices you can use ham whatever you want to make this a meal in itself all right so we’re going to keep keep going with this idea of doing
Something quick and easy and when we come back from the break we’re going to get started on the spaghetti with clam sauce it sounds so Fancy welcome back everybody and if you’re just joining me it might be because you in the hustle and bustle of the holiday season and that’s what we’re talking about today what are some quick and easy me meals that you can use things that are in your pantry and your
Refrigerator that you can keep on hand to pull this together at the last minute so we just made the Mandarin TOS salad it’s just a delicious fresh Light vinegarette dressing Salad that you can add a protein to and have it as a complete meal not only that you can have
The dressing left over or you can give it as a gift all right so this is the spaghetti and clam sauce this takes me back to being like 12 13 14 years old my older sister bitsy who I’ve talked about many times so many of her recipes were
So important to me growing up because I would visit her as a newlywed when I was that age and she was just the perfect little housewife so what I’ve done here is this is olive oil that I’m going to put in my pan and I’m going to start
Getting that a little bit warm but bitsy um she would like I said noodles I called it noodles but it’s spaghetti and and clam sauce um you know it sounds so fancy but it’s so easy and like I said if you keep some of this stuff in your
Pantry you can make this at any time so I’m getting the olive oil a little bit hot and you know Fresh Markets olive oils are really good quality these are this is going to cook well it takes the high heat it maintains the flavor of the other ingredients that you add into it
Now this is fresh parsley and I do recommend that you get the fresh and chop it up and then this is the garlic and I think sometimes people forget that garlic is not like an onion it’s going to cook a lot faster and if you keep your heat on like a
Medium this should work really well in terms of incorporating that flavor into this you know it’s a I guess it’s this is an Italian meal um you could do the Mandarin toss salad with this would be perfect all right so now I’ve got some ripe olives and that’s just in a can in
Your pantry like I’m saying and then maybe you have never purchased this so I’ve taken it out of the can but these are baby minced clams and all the juice that’s in the can you want to keep it so you could just really pour this straight from the can into your
Um pan so what you’re going to do at this point is just simmer it and as it simmers and Cooks it’s going to get a little bit thicker so in terms of why I wanted to do this today I love the idea of having things on hand that you can do
Quickly so this is just going to simmer down um I’m going to have my n my noodles or my spaghetti I still say noodles cuz that’s what what I said as a child and then I’m going to grate some fresh parmesan to go on top and during
Vera’s Corner today we’re going to talk about getting the house ready for any house guest that you might be having during the holidays and then we’ll put together that chocolate delight so I’ll see you back in just a Minute Vera’s corner is brought to you by tax Slayer you know cooking isn’t the only part of entertaining that’s important it’s also important to have your house clean the tiles in the kitchen and the bathroom looking amazing if they’re staying overnight so I’ve got some lowcost ingredients to make a home
Remedy to clean that grout and I’m going to suggest that you do it monthly you’ll want to grab some gloves a towel and a bottle that you can squirt on to the grout I like to label mine so I use it only for cleaning purposes and of course
Keep it in a cabinet mix 1/4 cup hydrogen peroxide 1/2 cup baking soda and 1 teaspoon dish soap and a liquid measuring cup pour into the grout squirt bottle apply the liquid mixture to the grout and allow to soak for 10 minutes using a scrubbing brush or a
Stiff wired brush scrub the grout gently generously to get in all of the cracks wipe up the liquid mixture with a towel being sure to wipe away from the grout so you don’t push any dirt back in turn on your shower to rinse out the remaining mixture and check afterwards
For any residue and rinse again if needed enjoy your sparkling clean tile floors start free today at tax layer.com Welcome back everybody and we’ve gone from delicious recipes to learning how to clean the grout in your shower but you know what isn’t that an easy recipe and just like the recipes we’re making on the show today you have all of those things in your house and it works so
Well so my tip is to just keep keep it up maybe do it once a month all right so these this is the chocolate delight this recipe was given to me in the late ’70s by Sue C in Madison Georgia and nobody had ever had it before it is such a good recipe
She won the prize at the potluck dinner for the best recipe of the night and so I have used this recipe many times but it kind of went away it kind of lost its luster but we put it in the new cookbook and now it’s like reinvented itself so
I’m so excited so I had a little bit I had to do an advance that the crust is melted butter flour and Pierce Farm Elliot halves that I chopped up to make this crust and it makes a really nice dough just quick and easy to mix up you
Don’t even need a mixer and then I pressed it in the pan with a spoon to get it evenly distributed in the pan and then you just bake that in the oven and let it cool down so that’s ready to go all right so now the filling and there’s
So many different layers to this it’s just delicious so this is cream cheese and like we were talking about today you want to keep some things in your refrigerator that you can make a recipe I would assume that you have every bit of this always all right so the cream
Cheese I got to room temperature or even a little softer and cream cheese will last for a couple of months in the refrigerator if you buy it so if you open it and don’t use the whole bar then you might want to use it again in the
Next couple of weeks or so um in a recipe but I’m adding in my confection sugar and what I’m doing here is just getting this really mixed together really well confectioner sugar you know I hardly use that anymore but it really doesn’t go out of date you know you
Might want to check the box but um back in the day when my children were younger I always had it for french toast and that was basically my main use of it all right so that looks pretty smooth so I’m going to turn my mixer down just a little bit
Now this is Cool Whip and Cool Whip can live in the freezer until you’re ready to use it and you can pull some of it out half of it out and put the rest back in the freezer so you can use it again I’m making a little bit of a mess here
But you know this is just going to blend into that and then we’re going to spread this over the cool crust so while I’m adding this in I’ve had so many people comment on Instagram or send um questions to info@ berry.com about my aprons and my aprons are Studio patro
And I absolutely love them I feel like I am very elegant in the kitchen when I they’re so comfortable they have pockets they’re just easy to put on and I’ve got a lot of different colors so be sure to check them out if you’re looking for a
Holiday gift for somebody that likes to cook get their name put on it all right so now I’m going to take this off and this is going to spread on top of that cool crust all right so just go down to the bottom and make sure it all Blended
Really well and now I’m just going to dollop this on top and again you want to make sure that that crust is cooled cuz otherwise it’s going to rip when you try to spread this around so the thing about this is the layers are so pretty so it really
Presents really well um if you’re going to do it as individually plated or if you’re doing a buffet you can either go ahead and score it or you could go ahead and just let people lift it out with a spoon I prefer to score it okay I’m going to switch down to my
Spoon so that I can just blend this around and just take your time because even though this is cool it’s a very delicate crust and you don’t want it to pull away turn this and we won’t be thinking about calories when we eat this because we’re
Going to be running around so much in the month of December that you will just burn those calories right off all right so now I’m going to get ready to do the chocolate filling all right so I’ve switched out my beater to a wire whisk but I don’t
Even have to wash the bowl I’ve put one package of chocolate instant Jell-O pudding in and now I’m going to add another pack and then I like to keep my milk in the refrigerator until the last minute so it’s good and cold and we’re just going to SL slowly add
This so that hopefully it’s very smooth when it mixes together and this beats for 2 minutes and you’re going to think it’s not done but it sets up in five so 2 minutes on the mixing and then we’ll add it to the next layer all right so that’s nice and
Creamy and we’re just going to add this to the top and again that spoon comes in really handy when you do this too you know and this is something that maybe you could get your young person in the kitchen with you to do all right so we’re going to get this
Finished and when we come back from the break you know it’s Christmas time so we still got to make it look pretty to show you at the end so come back with us in just a few minutes I may be licking this Bowl welcome back everybody and you know the purpose of today’s show was to give you some ideas of things to have in the refrigerator and the pantry so you can make a quick meal if someone comes over for dinner at the last minute or if you’ve been out shopping or worked l
During the holidays so hopefully you’ll go to our website at vera.com and try these recipes and keep some of these things on hand in your on your shelf all right so let’s walk back through what we did today we started with the Mandarin tossed salad and you know one of the
Features of this salad are the caramelized almonds that go in it and those are very easy to do it takes a little bit of time so you have to be patient but you put sugar in a heavy sauce pan and after after about 6 minutes of being on a medium high heat
You’re going to see it begin to start to melt and the next couple of minutes it’s going to get a golden color and as soon as all the sugar is div dissolved you’re going to add the almonds in and quickly remove that to a sheet pan and then that
Just works like I mean it’s like peanut brittle but it’s almonds and that’s what you’re going to garnish the salad with and one of the other tips today about this salad is this makes a really nice gift to give to a friend you can have the almonds already done you can have
The salad dressing already made and I just love the color of it and the way it looks and it has a really long shelf life all right so you’ve got an easy salad that can have a protein added to it so it could be a meal so then let’s
Move on to the spaghetti and clam sauce so again this is just an old old recipe and I always said noodles and clam clam sauce but it sounds so fancy when you say spaghetti and clam sauce and these are also ingredients that are going to
Be in your pantry the clams are in a can the olives are in a CL in a can the fresh parsley I do recommend that you get fresh parsley to make this recipe but in making it just remember that you want to let it simmer really well so
That the garlic and all of the the juice from the clams begins to thicken as it reduces down and I just put that on top of the um vermicelli is what I use today for it and spooned that on and then I grated some of my um fresh parmesan with
My mly grater so that’s you know that really reminds me of my grandmother but I keep that on hand as well so the noodles and clam sauce the Dre the clam sauce for that could go in this basket that you could take to a neighbor um the
Next recipe we did was the chocolate delight and I made a whole recipe on the show today but earlier I took that same recipe and divided it between two pans because I’m going to actually give that as a gift as well so you could use some
Pretty tissue paper some um Saran to put on top wrap it up with a bow and it’s a wonderful dessert that can freeze or they could eat it right away but I do recommend when you slice it that you clean your knife between each slice so that your layers stay pretty when you
Cut it all right then finally we did a cheesy artichoke toast and let me walk you through the steps to do that all right so you’re going to use four slices of sourdough bread and you’re going to put your oven on broil and you’re going to lay the bread directly on the rack
Because you want this to toast on both sides very well because the mixture that you’re going to put on top will soak into the bread and change the recipe so I do recommend that you do that step then the filling is so good you’ve got Arch chokes and here again that those
Can be out of a can the garlic and you could use minced garlic instead of fresh garlic if you didn’t have that on hand parmesan cheese that I’ve grated fresh gr cheese that I did the same way sour cream and that has a long shelf life
Lemon zest salt and pepper and then you divide that into four equal amounts and spread that evenly on the bread and then put it back in the oven at 425 for about 8 minutes and it just Cooks beautifully so this goes well with the salad this
Can go well with a bowl of soup so I certainly hope that you’ll try these recipes and remember if you’re in a big hurry pull into the fresh market and pick up one of their little big meals so again no matter what you do do it in
Good Taste come back and join me again next Week