Archive for the ‘How To & Tips’ Category

Fast 5-Ingredient with Fresh Garlic Salad Dressing Picture Book Directions

Picture book recipe shows how to make an easy, richly versatile 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic

The first post of the year showed how to make an easy, practical and terrifically versatile Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that required no knife skills. This post raises the bar a bit by substituting garlic powder with fresh garlic, and I’ll show you exactly how both to select and chop fresh garlic as easily as possible.

First, here are the ingredients you’ll need to make this 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing with Fresh Garlic. Yes, you’ll see 6 ingredients below because I sometimes use both cider and balsamic vinegar, but you don’t have to do that.

Ingredients needed to make 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic: fresh garlic, mustard, ground black pepper, olive oil and vinegar

The trickiest part of this recipe is selecting and chopping fresh garlic – not difficult at all. First, select garlic bulbs (bulb = the whole garlic ball you see below) that have some weight to them, are firm when squeezed, as shown below, and are made up of large, not small, garlic cloves (cloves = individual pieces of garlic that make up a garlic bulb), like those you see in the picture.

How to select a garlic bulb by weight and firmness

Here’s what I call a “3-shot” showing how to remove a garlic clove from a garlic bulb and how to remove the papery skin that encases fresh garlic cloves. (You’ll see how to do this in more detail if you download the recipe.)

3 pictures show how to remove garlic cloves from a garlic bulb and how to break and peel the skin from a garlic clove.

Here’s another 3-shot showing how to chop garlic with curled fingers on the garlic clove-gripping hand. (For more details on knife handling knife sharpening, see last post: 2 Keys to Kitchen Knife Safety: Keeping Knives Sharp and Hand Position While Cutting.)

3 pictures show how to slice and chop garlic.

Once you’ve chopped the fresh garlic, all you have to do is add mustard, ground black pepper, oil and vinegar and shake.

Finishing the salad dressing by adding mustard, ground black pepper, oil and vinegar and shaking the ingredients together..

All very easy – and fully flavorful!

Click this link or any picture on this page for complete step-by-step picture book directions.

Picture of 5-ingredient salad dressing with fresh garlic picture book recipe pages

Next post this week: The Clot Thickens – one of, if not the best, common sense books I’ve ever read about heart and cardiovascular health and what we eat – and much more.

Next food post: microwave warmed spinach, pear and feta cheese salad that I’ll shoot freshly and post here very soon that goes great with the 2 easy to make salad dressings posted here most recently.

2 Keys to Kitchen Knife Safety: Keeping Knives Sharp and Hand Position While Cutting

Kitchen knife safety title shot: sharp knife cutting a tomato and using curled fingers to hold a garlic clove to a cutting board while slicing that clove.

Last post showed how to make Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing that required no kitchen knife skills. Starting with the next post, 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing with Fresh Garlic, knife skills will become important. We’ll start slowly and deliberately, and I’ll help you with pictures, because knowing how to handle a knife safely in the kitchen – and I’ve sure taken my cuts…

Cut finger from not paying attention while cutting with a kitchen knife.

…is the THE most important kitchen skill to have.

There are 2 keys to kitchen knife safety: keeping knife blades sharp and using curled fingers to hold food in place while cutting. 

First, why keep knives sharp? Because a dull knife is the most dangerous kitchen tool. The reason is that you have to apply more pressure to a dull knife to make it cut into whatever it is that you want to cut, as shown in the left picture below. That added pressure increases the likelihood of that knife slipping off what you’re cutting into your food gripping hand. A sharp knife, however, sets an edge into what you’re cutting precisely and with less pressure and is therefore less likely to cause self-injury.

The 3 easiest ways to sharpen a knife are with a sharpening steel (notice that I’m sliding the sharp edge of the knife blade away from me, not toward me, in the picture below), electric knife sharpener and handheld sharpener. I do not include knife sharpening with a sharpening stone, or whetstone, here because that technique, though excellent, is more complicated and time consuming.

3 easiest ways to sharpen a knife are with a sharpening steel, electric knife sharpener andhandheld sharpener

Click this link or the picture below to download your choice of knife sharpening technique.

Link to Gotta' Eat, Can't Cook "How To's" that includes "Kitchen How To's" and Kitchen Knife Sharpening

There’s one more quick, last resort variation on the sharpening steel technique, which uses the squared back of one knife to sharpen a dull knife, as shown below. I’ll put together picture book directions soon and will post them here.

Finally, but equally importantly regarding kitchen knife safety, if you’ve downloaded recipes from the Gotta-Eat site that require any cutting with a knife, you’ve probably noticed that my fingers on the hand holding what I’m cutting to the cutting board are always curled as shown here.  

Cutting food safely with curled fingers on the hand holding food to a cutting board

The reason I do this is not to make me look like a chef – I’m not. I only do it to keep my fingers from getting in the way of the knife blade. Curling your fingers does two things: it gives you the firmest, best anchoring grip on the whatever you’re cutting and also allows your knuckles to work as a knife guide whether you’re using a fat bladed (chef’s) knife as shown above or a short bladed (paring) knife as shown below.

Cutting with Curled Fingers - Paring Knife

If you’re new to this curled finger technique, try it a few times and start slowly. Use both your hands as a unit as you cut from right to left if you’re right handed like me or left to right if you’re left handed. Once you feel comfortable curling your food-gripping fingers and using your hands as a unit deliberately and slowly, you can ramp up the speed.  In no time at all, curling your fingers and moving your hands together while you cut will become a habit – a darned good habit!

Next post: we’ll put this knife skill to use when we make 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing with Fresh Garlic.

Making Your Better Eating New Year’s Resolution Easy to Start with This Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Picture Book Recipe

I just asked ChatGPT (Open AI’s artificial intelligence source), “What is the most popular new year’s resolution in the USA for 2025?” The answer was interesting. ChatGPT said it did not yet have enough qualitative information to give an accurate answer. I like that answer. But, based on trends over recent years, the AI took what it called “an educated guess” that resolutions to improve mental health would be highest priority followed by resolutions to improve physical health, specifically regarding both diet and exercise. 

That makes a lot of sense. I’ve believed for a long time that the three things we can do to make the best of our quality of life is eat life-promoting foods, move our bodies rigorously and manage stress, all of which go a long way toward regulating our physical, mental and spiritual well-being. 

Considering this site is focused on how to prepare life-promoting foods as easily as possible, I asked AI, “What is the easiest recipe to teach a person new to cooking?”. The answer: scrambled eggs and toast, which required 5 needed ingredients plus optional ingredients to taste and 12 steps to complete. I think I have an easier answer and one that’s far easier to make and much more versatile than what AI offered:  Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing.

Helping veterans make life-promoting meals at Veterans Incorporated, Shrewsbury, MA

First, a quick back story. The first time I ever made this recipe was with a group of fellow veterans who were turning their lives around through Veterans Incorporated (Vets Inc.) in Shrewsbury, MA. One of the guys in the group, a fellow Navy veteran – not the guy shown above – chimed in when I listed the seven ingredients I intended to use: garlic powder, salt, ground black pepper, mustard, honey, vinegar and oil.

“Why do we need the added salt and sugar? A lot of guys here have diabetes and/or high blood pressure. We don’t need that _____(4-letter word for “stuff”)!

I get blunt great and agreed. But this was the first recipe I was teaching these guys, let alone the first time I’d ever met them. My inner dialog: “Fine, I’ll cut the salt and honey – but, boy, this dressing’s gonna’ taste horrible.”

I quickly made the dressing with just 5 ingredients: garlic powder, ground black pepper, mustard, vinegar and oil and asked the guys to taste a spoon of it before I tasted it myself. The stunner? They loved it, so did I – and I’ve never looked back.

Not only does this dressing taste great (most important), but it’s also incredibly easy to make and versatile. As shown in the few sample pictures below, it goes great on any kind of warm or cold salad, over cooked vegetables, meat, chicken, fish, pasta, rice – imagination is your only limit.

3 photos show examples of how versatile instant 5-ingredient salad dressing can be.

The toughest part about making this dressing is gathering the ingredients, like those shown below. You actually see six ingredients because I often use two different types of vinegars for added flavor (flavor rules here!), which you certainly don’t have to do.

Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing ingredients

Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete step-by-step picture recipe that includes information about the sourness of different vinegars and why this recipe is considered low in both salt and sugar.

Instant 5-Ingredient Salad Dressing Recipe 3 Shot

I wish you the very best starting both the new year and your resolutions and will do my best to help you stick to those resolutions related to eating better to improve your quality of life.

More very soon!

Innovative Bella Vita Laser-Cut Chestnuts – and More in 2025

Closeup showing a long laser-cut on one side of a chestnut

Bella Vita’s Celso Paganini introduced me to his newly innovated laser-cut chestnuts when we got together last month. First, there’s nothing different about the chestnuts themselves, extraordinarily fully flavorful northern Italian “Marroni” chestnuts. Instead, the innovation comes in the form of a long laser cut on one side of the chestnut that slices only through the tough shell but leaves the moisture-retaining membrane intact, as shown in the closeup above.

I roasted those chestnuts exactly as shown in the directions you can get by either clicking this link or any picture on this page.

How to roast chestnuts in the oven picture book directions

My only concern was that Celso’s laser-cut chestnuts, with only one cut in the chestnut shell that left the membrane intact, might explode under high roasting heat. But nothing close to that happened. Roasting went exceptionally well, and the finished roasted chestnuts peeled incredibly easily one after another, as shown in the pictures below.

Oven roasted laser-cut chestnut collage.

Unfortunately this year’s chestnut season, just like the year itself, is over, but I’ll check in with Celso and find out how you can get fantastically fresh and flavorful chestnuts later next year.

For now, I wish your family, friends and you a warm close to 2024 with the promise of more full-on flavorful in 2025.

Happy New Year!

Oven Roasted Chestnuts – All In Pictures

Oven Roasted Chestnuts Holiday Banner

It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s hard to imagine this time of year without hearing “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” playing downtown – or in my head. Unfortunately, I’ve never roasted chestnuts on an open fire, but some day I will.

As I’ve mentioned before, roasting chestnuts has been a big part of Tretter tradition. But recently, since meeting Celso Paganini, owner of Italian foods importer Bella Vita, I’ve tried roasting chestnuts using two different techniques. The first technique, completely new to me, involves soaking freshly cross cut chestnuts in cold water for 6-10 hours or in warm water for 5-10 minutes before roasting them. I tried that technique, which I’d also found on other websites and, which, of course, was bit more time consuming. The results turned out great as shown here.

But I also saw on one of the sites, Aysegul Sanford’s Foolproof Living, that she saw no difference between soaking and not soaking chestnuts before roasting, as explained below.

After trying both the soaking and not soaking technique, I agree with Aysegul completely. At the same time, though, I like Celso’s idea of pre-heating the oven to high heat, though I chose 500° F (260° C) instead of Celso’s preferred 550° F (290° C) because not all home ovens can warm to 550° F (290° C), and then right away turning the heat down to 425° F (220° C) as soon as the chestnuts go in the oven. I also like the idea that I learned from both Celso and Aysegul of wrapping the hot chestnuts right out of the oven in a clean dish towel for 5-10 minutes to allow the chestnut meat to soften and make peeling easier.

Wrapping Hot Chestnuts in a Towel After Roasting

In the end, here is my new favorite way of oven roasting chestnuts – no rinsing or soaking in water required – that you can get by clicking this link or the picture below.

Of course, I love freedom of choice. If you’d like to try the chestnut pre-roast water soaking technique, or you’ve read about it and want picture book directions to make it plainly easy, either click this link or the picture below.

Most of all, I hope you make the most of your own family traditions, and I wish you a warm, fun and spirit-renewing holiday week!

Fantastic – and Developing – Bella Vita Chestnut Roasting Learning Experience

Bags of fresh and vacuum packed Italian Bella Vita chestnuts.

You can’t have Christmas without hearing “Chestnuts Roasting on An Open Fire” – many, many times. Chestnuts and Christmas just go together.

And then there’s something about always learning something new and applying what you’ve just learned. You might have seen my posts hear about roasting chestnuts in a conventional kitchen oven or toaster oven. Roasting chestnuts has been family tradition beyond my lifetime.

Then, very recently, I met with Celso Paganini, owner of Bella Vita, Italian foods importer. I got some of his chestnuts at a Greenwich, CT, supermarket 2 years ago. I was so taken by their consistently rich flavor and how well they peeled after roasting that I had to call to let him know they were the best chestnuts I’d ever had. We’ve been in touch since. When we met a couple weeks ago, I asked how he roasts chestnuts.

Celso’s favorite roasting method is over an open fire. Killer, and I have to try that sometime. But, when that isn’t possible, he roasts them in a pan with holes in it, like the one shown below, in a conventional oven, first at high heat, 550° F, to char the shells and then reduces the oven heat to 425° F for most of the roasting time.

Chestnut roasting pan with holes in the bottom of the pan.

Interestingly, when I went to the Bella Vita site to look up Celso’s chestnut roasting directions, I saw that he includes an extra step. After making crosscuts into the shells of both sides of the chestnuts to keep the chestnuts from exploding under high heat, which is a must no matter what roasting technique you use,…

Chestnut with crosscuts in the shell to prevent the chestnut from exploding under high roasting heat.

…he also recommends soaking the freshly scored chestnuts in water before roasting.

Soaking freshly crosscut chestnuts in water before roasting.

I’d never heard of pre-soaking chestnuts before roasting them. Right away, I checked other top hit chestnut roasting directions, and though some of them suggested doing the same, one of them, Foolproof Living said they saw no difference between soaking and not soaking chestnuts, as explained below.

Still, I gave the soaking technique a try, and though the result turned out great, and I put together drafted picture book directions to make that technique easy to learn and use, I’m going to use the same chestnuts from one of the bags shown above and roast them exactly as I did the soaked chestnuts only without soaking and compare results.

Yep, that means more to follow. And that’s what learning and adapting – or maybe confirming – is all about.

In the meantime, I still stand by the easy, straightforward directions I’ve had here on the site and have posted about recently that you can get by clicking this link or the picture book directions image below.

More soon!

Easiest, Go-To Roast Turkey Recipe – All in Pictures

stress-free-roast-turkey

Here’s an easy-to-use, go-to cooking technique that makes for a terrifically tender, fully flavor – and good looking – roast turkey.

First some quick tips:

  • I highly recommend using an oven-proof meat thermometer, as shown in the equipment needed picture below, to ensure roasting the turkey to the proper doneness temperature.
  • Traditional recipes usually call for roasting the turkey with stuffing in the main cavity. I recommend roasting the turkey without stuffing for the best turkey roasting result.
  • Make sure the turkey is completely defrosted, if you’re using a frozen turkey, and then allow that defrosted or fresh turkey to warm close to room temperature before roasting.
  • Start cooking the turkey breast-side down for most of the roasting timeand turn the turkey breast-side up for the last 50 minutes no matter the turkey weight.
  • Let the freshly roasted turkey rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes before carving and serving.

Regarding temperature and timing, start with the turkey placed in a roasting pan BREAST-SIDE DOWN and cook at high oven heat (450℉/230℃) for the first 30 minutes no matter the turkey’s weight. After 30 minutes, turn the oven heat down to 325℉ /165℃ for the bulk of roasting time with the turkey still breast-side down. Again, no matter the turkey weight, turn the turkey breast-side up and keep the temperature at the same 325℉ /165℃ for the last 50 minutes of cooking. See the note below about how to turn the turkey breast-side down to breast-side up.

Here are all the ingredients you need to make a stress-free roast turkey.

stress-free-roast-turkey-ingredients

Here’s the equipment you need.

stress-free-roast-turkey-equipment

The most difficult part of this recipe is turning the turkey from breast-side down to breast side-up, but the picture book directions show how to do that as easily and safely as possible as shown here.

turning-roast-turkey-breast-side-up

Click this link or any picture on this page for a complete, newly revised step-by-step picture book recipe.

stress-free-roast-turkey-picture-book-recipe

Stress-Free Thanksgiving Dinner Planning & Timing Guide With Recipe Links

Thanksgiving food shopping list by grocery store aisle and stress-free Thanksgiving dinner planning and timing guide blog banner image.

All right! Thanksgiving’s just 3 days away, and if you’re the one on the hook to make Thanksgiving dinner, it’s time to flip the action switch to on – without making yourself crazy.

First, if you haven’t yet gotten all the ingredients you need to make Thanksgiving dinner, please get to the grocery store today (Monday) or tomorrow (Tuesday), especially if you’re roasting a frozen turkey as frozen turkeys take at least 2 days to defrost properly. To make grocery shopping as easy as possible either click this link or the picture below to download a Thanksgiving Dinner Shopping List Organized By Grocery Store Aisle.

Thanksgiving Food Shopping List Organized By Grocery Store Aisle

Next, either click this link or the picture below to download the Stress-Free Thanksgiving Planning and Timing Guide so you know in advance what to expect realistically over the next few days, which is all manageable even if you have little to no experience in the kitchen.

Next couple days: fully flavorful and easy-to-make Thanksgiving Day recipes.

Easy-to-Use Thanksgiving Food Shopping List by Grocery Store Aisle

Thanksgiving Grocery List - Step One Banner

Look at it like having to get a high school or college research paper done on time. If you chip away over time, no problem. If you wait til the last second, like I always did – right to the gonging bell, big time stress.

Same with putting together a fully-flavor Thanksgiving dinner. If you give yourself time, and you do have time if you’re reading this 4-5 days before Thanksgiving, you’ll be fine – even if you’ve never put together any kind of dinner before. I’ll help you right here. If, on the other hand, you don’t give yourself the time you need, you already know the answer.

looking down the barrel at Thanksgiving less than a week away

As of this weekend, we’re looking straight down the barrel at Thanksgiving less than a week away. No problem.

The first step: use the next 2-3 days to get what you need from the grocery store. I’ve made it easy for you. Just click this link or any picture on this page to download a Thanksgiving Grocery List Organized By Grocery Store Aisle.

Thanksgiving Grocery List Organized By Grocery Store Aisle.

More Thanksgiving help real soon!

Stress-Free Thanksgiving Dinner Grocery List and Timing Guide

Like I mentioned recently in Stress-Free Picture Book Thanksgiving Dinner Help, Thanksgiving’s by far my favorite holiday! All that’s expected is a good meal and getting together with family and friends. Not much more to be thankful about than that.

Of course, if you’re the one putting that uniquely traditional dinner together and are not comfortable in the kitchen, the challenge of pulling it off successfully can be overwhelming. I’ve sure been there, and relieving that stress is what this post and others like it are all about.

The two most important keys to putting together a successful and stress-free Thanksgiving dinner are planning and timing. That means making sure you have all the ingredients you need in advance (stores are usually – and thankfully – closed on Thanksgiving Day) and coordinating cooking timing in the kitchen.

To help you get the ingredients you need as efficiently as possible, click this link or the picture below for a grocery shopping list to make a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 6-8 people that includes roast turkey, gravy, bread stuffing, fresh cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pie dessert. Of course, just adjust those quantities as needed based on how many people you expect to join you for Thanksgiving dinner.

And, though though it’s a little early to start actually preparing any Thanksgiving dishes, click this link or the picture below for a timing guide that lays out clearly just about everything you’ll need to do to put together a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

More about specific Thanksgiving recipes to follow that we’ll have fun putting together!

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