…from the Perspectives’ Happy Hour Bar How you doin’? I always thought that gin was an English invention. I was wrong… its origin is attributed to Franciscus Sylvius, a 17th-century professor of medicine at the University of Leiden in Holland, who distilled the juniper berry with spirits to produce an inexpensive medicine having the diuretic properties of juniper-berry oil. Gin was declared contraband by the English and the government was forced to act. The 1736 Gin Act taxed retail sales at 20 shillings a gallon and made selling gin without a £50 annual license strictly illegal. But over the next seven years, only two licenses were taken out meaning reputable sellers were put out of business, and bootleggers thrived. Most people get hit by this strong taste that lingers in their mouth when they drink gin. Some say it is too bitter and has a weird medicinal taste, which is usually if they taste a traditional, dry gin that will have a strong juniper aroma. Today, gin is more popular than ever and there is no sign of it waning anytime soon. In the last decade, gin has seen a revival incomparable to any other spirit on the market. The "gin-aissance," as it is sometimes called, has led to a significant boom in gin making in the UK and the US featuring flavored spirits. Ingredients 1 small cluster mint leaves, divided 1-1/2 ounces of Tanqueray Rangpur Lime Gin 1/2 teaspoon cucumber bitters 6 ounces tonic 1 long cumber slice (see photo image) for garnish Directions
ChefSecret: Option: Garnish cocktail by placing a cucumber slice onto cocktail pick, pushing the slice into a wave. Quip of the Day: I just went on the Gin & Tonic Diet. I Already lost 3-days. -------------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. -------------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #HappyHour #Gin #CucumberLimeTanquerayTonic #Tanqueray #Tonic #Cucumber #Cheers #2023 #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2023
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…from the Perspectives Kitchen How you doin’? With prices on all food stuffs sky-rocketing, here is a comforting baked pasta that won’t break the bank. You can use whatever style and shape pasta you have in your pantry from lasagna noodles to shells or spaghetti. This recipe uses 1 pound of ground meat (beef, chicken, turkey, or Italian sausage) and plenty of melted cheese. This can be the perfect take along dish for potluck meals, family gatherings, or a weeknight dinner. This recipe was a favorite on the national school lunch program served every Tuesday at my grade school. I loved it so much I asked my mother to talk with Mrs. Brady, the cafeteria lady, to get the recipe. The finished baked casserole can be frozen for up to 3 months and zapped in the microwave for quick serving. Prep time: 25 minutes Cook time: 20 minutes Bake time: 50 to 55 minutes Yield: 8 servings Ingredients 1 (16 ounce) package pasta (shape of your choice) 1 pound ground meat (your choice) 1 onion, chopped 1 (32 ounce) jar meatless spaghetti sauce 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt (I prefer Lawry’s) 2 large eggs 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese 5 tablespoons butter, melted (or olive oil) 2 cups ricotta cheese, divided (or cottage cheese) 5 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided Directions
ChefSecret: I like to use a 50/50 mixture of Italian sausage and ground beef. Quip of the Day: How did the police solve the case of the stolen marinara sauce? They caught the thief red handed. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America and/or American Red Cross. #Entree #BakedPasta #PastaBake #MeatSauce #Mozzarella #Parmesan #BudgetMeal #2023Recipes #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2023 … from the Perspectives’ Kitchen It’s that thankful time of year again… time to eat, drink and be merry! Starting with this blog, you will find some of the best holiday recipes that have been standards for Joan and me and many of the Perspectives’ team members. Once you've got the turkey a cookin' and the pies a bakin', be sure to take some time to think about all we’re being thankful for and how the tradition got started. Before we get into the history of this wonderful holiday—Americans’ favorite, by the way—here are some thoughts for a successful celebration. First, draft a menu for this special day, covering all the Thanksgiving necessities: turkey, side dishes and pies and other desserts, plus don't forget the wine (sip happens!) and seconds, too. Second, keep Thanksgiving Day on a high note… Celebrate the holiday but skip the politics this year and guide your family dinner conversation to light and fun places, along with talk of what you are each thankful for, perhaps with Thanksgiving songs playing in the background too. You can add in some Thanksgiving jokes and even some mom and dad reminisces (that’s always good for a chuckle or two) while you are at it. Read through them all to find just the right Thanksgiving Instagram caption for your photo images from this year's around the table celebration too, and if you want to take one to next level, put them on matching T-shirts for Christmas gifts to be given to participating family members next month. Now get ready, it's time to gobble 'til you wobble—and hopefully not squabble—until it's time for a round of tree hilarious Christmas puns. As the saga goes, the English sailed from England on the Mayflower, landed at Plymouth Rock and had a good harvest in 1621. So, the governor (William Bradford) held a feast to celebrate and invited a group of friendly Native Americans, including the Wampanoag chief Massasoit and they feasted on fowl, deer and pie. Setting aside time to give thanks for one's blessings, along with holding feasts to celebrate a harvest, are both practices that long predate the European settlement(s) of North America. The Puritans observed days of fasting to pray for God's favor, as well as days of celebration to thank God for a bountiful harvest, victory and other joyous occasions. Documented thanksgiving services in the territory (now the United States) were conducted in the 16th century by English, Spaniards and the French. These days of thanksgiving were celebrated through church services and feasting. Historian Michael Gannon claimed St. Augustine, Florida was founded with a shared thanksgiving meal on September 8, 1565. Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607; the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia held a thanksgiving in 1610. On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers celebrated a thanksgiving immediately upon landing at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia. The group's London Company charter specifically required, "that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God." This celebration has, since the mid-20th century, been commemorated there annually at present-day Berkeley Plantation, the ancestral home of the Harrison family of Virginia. The Plymouth settlers, known as Pilgrims, had settled in a land abandoned when all but one of the Patuxet Indians died in a disease outbreak. After a harsh winter killed half of the Plymouth settlers, the last surviving Patuxet, Tisquantum, more commonly known by the diminutive variant Squanto (who had learned English and avoided the plague as a slave in Europe), came in at the request of Samoset, the first Native American to encounter the Pilgrims. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them until he too succumbed to the disease a year later. The Wampanoag leader Massasoit also gave food to the colonists during the first winter when supplies brought from England were insufficient. Massasoit had hoped to establish an alliance between the Wampanoag, themselves greatly weakened by the same plague that took the toll on the Patuxet and the better-armed English in their long-running rivalry with a Narragansett tribe that had largely been spared from the epidemic; the tribe reasoned that, given that the Pilgrims had brought women and children, they had not arrived to wage war against them. The Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. The exact time is unknown, but James Baker, the Plymouth Plantation vice president of research, stated in 1996, "The event occurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11, 1621, with the most likely time being around Michaelmas (Sept. 29), the traditional time." Seventeenth-century accounts do not identify this as a Thanksgiving observance, rather it followed the harvest. It included 50 people who were on the Mayflower (all who remained of the 100 who had landed) and 90 Native Americans. The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived their first winter in the New World (Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna White), along with young daughters and male and female servants. According to accounts by Wampanoag descendants, the harvest was originally set up for the Pilgrims alone; the surviving natives, hearing celebratory gunfire and fearing war, arrived to see the feast and were warmly welcomed to join the celebration, contributing their own foods to the meal. Two colonists gave personal accounts of the 1621 feast in Plymouth. The Pilgrims, most of whom were Separatists (English Dissenters), are not to be confused with Puritans, who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony on the Shawmut Peninsula (current day Boston) in 1630. Both groups were strict Calvinists but differed in their views regarding the Church of England. Puritans wished to remain in the Anglican Church and reform it, while the Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the church. The Pilgrims held a true Thanksgiving celebration in 1623 following a fast and a refreshing 14-day rain, which resulted in a larger harvest. William DeLoss Love calculates that this thanksgiving was made on Wednesday, July 30, 1623, a day before the arrival of a supply ship with more colonists, but before the fall harvest. In Love's opinion, this 1623 thanksgiving was significant because the order to recognize the event was from civil authority (Governor Bradford), and not from the church, making it likely the first civil recognition of Thanksgiving in New England. And now you know the rest of the story! ChefSecret: As you prepare your menu and guest list, write down something you are thankful for about each person. Quip of the Day: Q: Do you know how the turkey got home for Thanksgiving dinner? A: He took the gravy train. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your very best recipes, pictures or thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. Recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America and/or American Red Cross. #ThanksgivingRecipes #Thanksgiving #HistoryOfThanksgiving #Holidays2023 #BeThankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #RedCross #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2023 From the Perspectives’ Happy Hour Bar Boo! How you doin’? I had trouble deciding which Halloween cocktail to post this year, so if you’re one of those people who live for Halloween, it’s your lucky day! Here’s an extra-innings spooky sipper that is strictly for adults from the fun folks at BreadBoozeBacon.com. The colors might not look all that enticing, but this sweet and fruity drink is the total opposite of how it looks. It’s one of my favorite spooky Halloween cocktails to scare up some fun with all the guys and ghouls! Beetlejuice is loaded with fruity liqueurs that’ll have everyone asking for another round. It is the secret combination of Midori, Chambord, Blue Curaçao and Sweet & Sour that gives this drink a bright Beetlejuice green color. Then we add some cranberry to creep it up a bit! If you’re familiar with your grammar school color wheel, you’ll remember green and red make brown. That color combo stirred together gives this drink that creepy greenish-brown color. Perfect and totally awesome for a Halloween party! So, turn on the juice and see what shakes loose. This ghost with the most knows what he’s talking about people! Just be careful not to imbibe too much or you’ll be saying Beetlejuice… Beetlejuice…Beetle… oops! That could have been bad. Prep time: 3 minutes Yield: 1 cocktail Ingredients 1 ounce vodka 1/2 ounce Midori melon liqueur 1/2 ounce Chambord raspberry liqueur 1/2 ounce Blue Curacao 2 ounces sweet and sour 1-1/2 ounces cranberry juice Ice Directions
ChefSecret: If you like layers of creepiness, float the cranberry juice on top and don’t mix it in. It looks like blood floating on top. Quip of the Day: “Let's turn on the juice and see what shakes loose!” ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, stay well, stay safe and be kind. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America and/or American Red Cross. #Cocktail #HappyHour #BeetlejuiceCocktail #Halloween #Midori #Chambord #BlueCuracao #CranberryJuice #Cheers #2023 #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #FeedingAmerica #RedCross #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2023 …from the Perspectives’ Holiday KitchenHow you doin’? You’ve heard it talked about for years, right? This year it’s time to give it a shot. My Deep Fried Turkey recipe is not only easy, but it also produces a super crispy, flavorful and succulent bird. The perfect combination for a memorable Thanksgiving Turkey dinner! I love the flavor and texture of deep-fried foods. I love perfectly cooked French fries. That said, I don’t fry much at home because it can be a big mess. My range top and kitchen counters are covered in oil when I’m finished even though I use a spatter screen. The odor of vaporized fry oil lingers around the house for days and I hate the smell of day-old oil. If there is one deep fry recipe, I love it’s got to be Deep Fried Turkey. I’m sure you’ve seen those clips on YouTube and America’s Funniest Home Videos, of people lowering the turkey into an outdoor gas fryer and the whole thing going up in flames… including the garage! While those scenes may be off putting and a little scary, I want to appeal to your adventuresome side and encourage you to give it try it anyway. To do it right you must start by buying the right equipment. Safety First! For about $100 you can find an outdoor fryer on Amazon or your favorite hardware store, and about $60 bucks at Bass Pro Shops. There are all kinds of places and options to choose from but do it now before they sell out. You should have on hand:
What else are you going to need? The ingredients list is quite simple and very easy to pull off in this recipe. Ingredients Whole Turkey (Thawed Completely) I like to use a 10-pound bird Cooking Oil (2-3 gallons of peanut oil) Turkey Injecting Marinade (recipe below) Turkey Dry Rub Seasoning (recipe below) For the dry rub seasoning 3 tablespoons lemon pepper seasoning 2 tablespoons poultry seasoning 1 tablespoon salt 2 teaspoons roasted garlic powder (I prefer Penzy’s) 2 teaspoons onion powder For the injecting marinade 1/2 cup peanut oil 1/4 cup water 1/4 cup lemon juice 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning 1 teaspoon garlic powder Deep Fried Turkey Seasoning Read the directions thoroughly before starting the recipe. Directions How to make deep fried turkey
When fully cooked the skin will be dark, but very flavorful… not burnt tasting. The turkey meat will be ultra-tender and juicy from breast to tail. Best of all, you won’t ever be seen on YouTube (for this) or the evening news with your garage burning down in the background! ChefSecrets: Get ready by having everything ready to go.
Quip of the Day: My family told me to stop telling Thanksgiving jokes, but I said I couldn't quit cold turkey. So, Gobble 'til you wobble. Important Disclaimer: Perspectives and its employees are not responsible for dummies who don’t follow instructions and burn themselves or others or burn their house or garage down. ------------------------------------------- Do you have a question or comment? Send your thoughts to ed@perspectives-la.com. All recipes and cooking tips are posted on our website https://www.perspectives-la.com/covid-19-survival-guide. ------------------------------------------- To you and everyone dear to you, be strong, positive, kind, thankful, and stay well and safe. Take a breath and count your blessings, and if you have a little extra to share with others, please consider donating to Feeding America and/or American Red Cross. #ThanksgivingRecipes #Thanksgiving #DeepFriedTurkey #Turkey #ThanksgivingTurkey #HolidayRecipes #Holidays2023 #BeThankful #QuarantineKitchen #Covid19 #RedCross #FeedingAmerica #PerspectivesTheConsultingGroup ©PERSPECTIVES/The Consulting Group, LLC, 2023 |
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