Happy Valentine’s Day! How do You Tell Someone You Love Them?

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In the spirit of the week, Happy Valentine’s Day! How do you tell someone you love them?

I’m not a huge fan of this holiday although you’d never know it by the amount of baking and candy coming in and out of here the past few days! My mother called it “a card store” holiday. She always said if you love someone, tell them or show them now, don’t wait for a card company to tell you to do it. Of course she was was right, and I’m glad she taught me that. The last words I said to her were I love you. I have held that that in my heart everyday for the past 21 years.

That’s the funny thing about love, you carry it with you even when the person lives far away, doesn’t call, forgets your birthday, or is no longer with us. So in light of this, how can you not be captivated by a holiday that is all about love? How do you tell them you love them?

If you have someone you are in love with, infatuated with, smitten with, enchanted by, fascinated by, or bewitched by, don’t wait until tomorrow to tell them. Do it now – never wait – pick up the phone and say I love you. My 10 year old niece Amanda knows this. On Monday she put a little bag of candy in her mother’s purse with a note on it. She does things like this all the time. When she comes here for a visit, she leaves little love notes and drawings on post-it notes all over my house which I find for weeks after – pure love. On Tuesday, I received a package in the mail from my niece Brette and her husband Adam. It was a box of ruggalach from a new place in NYC I wanted them to try. I had no idea I would be trying them too! I was so surprised. I’ll be writing more about this in an upcoming post. Last week I sent a cozy blanket to my sister-in-law Cathy, “just because” It’s something she did for me in the fall which I have been meaning to share with you  – see the photo below.

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This is the box I received from my sister-in-law Cathy. She sent it sometime last September. It was such a surprise! I loved every bit of it down to the notes written on scraps of paper! How cute are the baby spoons and toothpicks?

Most holidays I send baked goods to family as friends. Valentine’s Day, I send cookies to people that aren’t expecting them and it’s quite a surprise. I’ll usually pick someone I haven’t seen or spoken to in years. Tomorrow I’ll go into the post office and bring Janet a bag of cookies too. I’m always mailing out cookies and this year, I think I’ll bring some to her. So follow my lead. Bring someone candy on the 10th of February, call me and order a special box of goodies for your college student – for no reason, send someone flowers on March 14th, apologize to someone if you’ve upset them, write a love note just because, send someone a cozy blanket, leave chocolate kisses on a loved one’s pillow, bring a friend or co-worker a cup of coffee with a note on the cup, give beautiful strawberries without chocolate on them, write a poem – it doesn’t have to rhyme, send someone something in the mail by surprise, and most important… tell them you love them every single day – don’t wait until tomorrow!

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On this day, Friday, February 13th (yikes! it’s Friday the 13th!) I am heading into my kitchen to get ready for the farmer’s market. Tomorrow, you can find me at 400 West Rich Street Farmer’s Market sharing the love with… Red velvet caramel popcorn, caramel apples all decked out for that special someone (could be yourself, in fact why not you?), valentine candy, and maybe even a special valentine granola mix! Time to get to work!

But before I go… Here is a challenge for you. How do YOU tell someone you love them? Share your answers with me and I’ll post them. Then, show me how much you love me, by sharing my website with a friend or family member. Ask them to subscribe to my blog and like me on Facebook. Happy Valentine’s day! Try it and see what happens, I might surprise you with a little love from Splash of Sherri’s… Kitchen!

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Valentine packages sent to college students. I’ll be creating a website for this new endeavor shortly.

 

Going to the NHL All-Star Weekend in Columbus? Plan to take a Snack Break at the 400!

Columbus will be Hoppin’ this weekend with the NHL All-Star Weekend of festivities. And I will be Poppin’ at the Farmer’s Market at 400 W. Rich!

If you’re planning on joining the All-Star Weekend activities, take a break from all the testosterone and come to the 400 for a visit’! Four new flavors of caramel popcorn are coming with me! Banana Split Caramel Popcorn anyone?

Hope to see you there! We’re only 5 minutes away from all the festivities!

Lights Out Summer Gazpacho

SONY DSCI have to admit, lights out summer gazpacho is a funny name for a recipe. It’s definitely not the original name I came up with. However, 10 minutes after I finished photographing this beautiful soup, I put it in the refrigerator, went upstairs to publish this post and the lights went out in my house! The computer shut down and my post was lost! Now I worried, what would happen to my delicious gazpacho? I ran downstairs and poured myself a bowl. Topped with some avocado, cucumber and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, this cool refreshing soup took my mind off how hot my house was! It was the perfect dinner.

Gazpacho is a cold Spanish soup, made with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and onions. It takes less than 30 minutes to put it all together and only gets better with age. There aren’t too many soups you can say that about. Plus, I don’t know about you, but among the many staples I have in my kitchen, are onions, garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and tomato juice. With these few ingredients you are always ready for a Bloody Mary (just add vodka), a great Greek salad, Israeli salad, and of course this quick, easy and delicious gazpacho. In this recipe, I used Roma tomatoes, a.k.a. plum tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes but you can substitute any kind of tomato. Heirloom would be a great choice, which I know can be expensive but worth the flavor they add, tomatoes on the vine, or a mixture of several varieties. During the summer, you can find sweet and delicious Vidalia onions* – I use them for everything and they are great in this cold soup! I also like the large sweet Spanish onions, which are appropriate for this Spanish soup.

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where you can go to a farmer’s market for ingredients, or straight to the farm, you should take advantage of that. There is nothing like fresh farm grown fruits and vegetables. They often have their own variety of tomatoes and when fresh picked enhance anything you cook or bake. I hope you try this easy and refreshing gazpacho. It’s a quick and easy light lunch or dinner along side salad or quiche. Enjoy!

SONY DSCingredients
4 plum tomatoes
1 pint red teardrop tomatoes
2 bell peppers (any combination of red, yellow or orange)
1 English (aka hot house cucumber) cut in 1/2 and seeded
1 sweet onion cut into large pieces (if vidalia onions are in season, use them!)
4 cups low sodium tomato juice (I use Trader Joe’s low sodium Garden Patch)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup good extra virgin olive oil
3 to 4 cloves of garlic minced
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
hot sauce (optional)
garnishes: avocado, croutons or oyster crackers, finely diced cucumber, sliced olives, feta cheese or grilled fresh corn.

recipe makes 6 to 8 servings

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vibrant and beautiful peppers from the farmer’s market?

directions:
Cut the tomatoes, peppers and onions into approximately 1″ pieces. Slice and take the seeds out of the cucumber. Mince the garlic and add to the onion. Put the vegetables into the food processor one at a time and pulse until it’s coarsely chopped. Don’t process it too fine. Then after you process each vegetable, add it to a large bowl or pot.

Add the tomato juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and sugar. Mix well and chill before serving. You can top it with any of the garnishes suggested or come up with one of your own.

*In Georgia they say people eat them like they would a peach as they are so sweet. Two fun little facts: they are Georgia’s official state vegetable – and I’m a huge fan!

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Here’s What’s Coming…

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post and I owe all my readers a big apology! My intention is to write something at least 3 times a week and being a newbie at this I’m still figuring out my groove. I marvel at some of the bloggers that post everyday; it has to be their full time job!

Whether you come up with an original recipe or follow one from a cookbook, you still have to shop for ingredients, then do the cooking or baking. After that, you have to style and photograph the food, sometimes photographing and documenting how to make the recipe all along the way. Then you then have to go through tons of photographs and select just the right ones. In some cases the photos need to be edited in Photoshop. Finally you can sit down to write a story to go with it. Writing the story, recipe, and editing, can easily take an hour or two. Now that you see what it takes to write a blog post, hopefully you’ll give me a pass for leaving you the past couple of weeks. But trust me, I wasn’t on a vacation from my blog. I was doing research and have had a great many food experiences and adventures along the way.

So, what’s been going on with Sherri? Well, quite a bit actually!

Here’s what you have to look forward to:

Entered a Food Contest (came in 4th place in my category)

Had friends for dinner, one of which writes the blog No Chefs Allowed and she brought me Homemade Preserved Lemons.

Tried a charming New Restaurant in town (South of Lane).

Came up with a great Veggie Burger Recipe & Sauce to go with it.

Found a fun cookbook with Ice Pop Recipes that look so good I can’t wait to try one!

Ordered from a Snack Delivery Service I saw advertised on the Cooking Channel (which I received today),

Thinking about doing a Food Crawl in my area focusing on coffee – iced of course!

Went to a Farmer’s Market i can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Going to take a class called The Life of Pie.

There you have it, a truly fun filled couple of weeks that I’m ready to write about and share with you, So Get Ready!