~ Culinary Q&A & Kitchen Therapy Too (2/25/11) ~

We're at the tailend of February here at Kitchen Encounters and this, February's last week, has been one of Melanie's Kitchen's busiest since starting this blog.  More people than ever are following Kitchen Encounters via my Facebook posts.  Three of my Facebook friends (Jeanne, Loretta and Pam) requested that I start linking my blog posts directly to Facebook.  "So it shall be written, so it shall be done!" ~ Rameses

 

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were in preparation for and another shoot with WHVL-TV. 

Kitchen Encounters fourth segment will air in March on their Sunday morning Centre of It All show, and will be featuring me preparing my recipes for:

 

~ Braised & Brown Sugar-Glazed Spiced Corned Beef Sandwiches ~

~ Home-Baked Crusty Caraway Seed Rolls ~

~ My Favorite Egg & Potato Salad ~

This St. Patrick's Day menu will air the first and third Sundays in March at 11:30AM on our local channel 235!  I'll be posting all of the recipes in the next couple of days, so check back soon!  We're still working on you being able to watch the segments right here on my blog, but in the meantime, you can watch them at www.whvl.com!

Thursday and Friday (today) were spent making A LOT of my Chocolate-Dipped Coconut-Almond Macaroons for my friend Faith who owns The Philips Hotel and The Philips 1921 Restaurant!

The Philips featured these sweet treats this evening and plans to make them a signature dessert, as well as take orders and sell them.

I am really excited to be their new consulting pastry chef and will be representing Faith and her hotel in April at a Sweet Treats professional pastry chef cooking demonstration in Dubois, PA!  To read more about this, go to www.thephilips1921.com and click/link onto their facebook page!

THERE IS MORE!  On Tuesday I got a really nice comment and request from one of my regular readers here at Kitchen Encounters:

Q.  Bethanie comments, then asks:  OMG!  I made your recipe for coconut shrimp and they were the best I ever tasted.  I didn't have a deep-fryer and they still turned out perfectly using a pot on the stove.  Thank you so much for sharing this with me and my seafood loving husband!

Do you have any "simple" recipes for a baked main-dish pasta that isn't lasagna, but similar?  By that I mean:  something I can quickly put together to feed my family and/or friends on a casual Friday night.  It's not that I don't like lasagna, I just want a delicious pasta casserole that I can scoop out and serve with a salad to the side.  I hope this makes sense.

A.  Kitchen Encounters:  Great to hear from you again Bethanie!  You TOTALLY make sense to me and I think I have just the recipe you are looking for:  Baked Ziti, Sausage & Three-Cheese Casserole.  It is a recipe I used to make a lot when my kids were young, then resurrected when HBO's hit show The Sopranos's made baked ziti casserole famous.  You can count on me making this over the weekend and posting the recipe for you in the next day or two.  Once again Bethanie, I REALLY enjoy hearing from you!!!

Have a great weekend everyone, and once again:  To leave a comment or to ask a question, simply click on the blue title of any post, scroll to the end of it and type away!

"We are all in this food world together." ~ Melanie Preschutti

(Commentary and Photos courtesy of Melanie's Kitchen/Copyright 2011)