= a perfect Saturday
I spent yesterday afternoon hanging out at grocery stores. 🙂
The local health food grocery store, Healthy Home Market, had their annual wine and food tasting. Â I met a couple of friends there to sample and hang out.
I talked to the owner of Hearth Strings Foods for a while about their transition from using high fructose corn syrup to a non-fructose corn syrup. Â You can purchase their baked goods at several places throughout Charlotte, including Dilworth Coffee and of course, Healthy Home Market. Â Also, they’re currently giving away free granola on their website. Â All that’s required is payment for shipping and handling.
There were a lot of tasty samples, but I took it easy since I had just come from lunch.
These fish cakes reminded me of conch fritters I ate in Key West. Â Except these were served by a very nice lady named Sadie who makes the fish cakes, not some salty man with a beard and a deep fryer on a pier.
Then there was wine. Â I bought a bottle of organic red wine from Sicily that was only $5.49. Â What a steal!
After doing a little socializing and a little shopping, I headed over to Trader Joe’s for the basics.  When I returned home, I got to work on a little project I’m working on for SavorNC, which is a statewide online magazine.  It involves cereal and no boxes were involved. 😉 Sorry to be cryptic, but I’ll share more later this week when it publishes.
After my baking experiments, I decided to use this ground chicken I picked up from the Healthy Home Market. Â The original plan was to make sloppy Joes, but instead I made…
Sloppy Josés!
Sloppy Josés (serves 4-5)
1.2-1.25 pounds of ground chicken (I used 90/10)
1/2 chopped red bell pepper
1/2 chopped small yellow onion
1 de-seeded and finely chopped jalapeno
Sauce:
1/3 cup organic ketchup
1/3 cup organic salsa
1 tsp. prepared mustard
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. demerara sugar (natural brown sugar)
1 tsp. dried cilantro
1/2 tsp. cayenne powder*
1/2 tsp. sea salt
In a pan, brown chicken, onion, and peppers until chicken is cooked thoroughly (you don’t need oil if your chicken has a little fat like mine did). Â In a bowl, combine sauce ingredients and mix well. Â Once chicken is cooked through, add sauce to pan and stir until chicken is thoroughly covered.
Serve on whole wheat hamburger buns.
*Brad and I like spicy foods, but if you don’t, you might want to try starting with 1/4 tsp. of cayenne. Â Taste the sauce to see if it’s adequately spicy or if you can handle a little more.
I served our Sloppy Josés with roasted parsnips and fennel bulb.
Of course, ketchup as involved. Â It’s possible that I have eaten ketchup every night this week. Â Clearly I need an intervention.
Brad and I had planned to stay in, but changed our minds we were invited over to our friends’ house.  Brad continued to work on a project  with our friend John and I played Just Dance on the Wii with my friends Krissy and Megan.  It was a lot of fun!
Between the Wii and Turbo Kick yesterday, I did more dancing than a Saturday night in college. 🙂
