Skip to main content

Happy Fourth of July

Today, I made chocolate covered strawberries for a Fourth of July party we are going to and added some festive red, white and blue sprinkles such as these that I got on Amazon.  I've made these chocolate covered strawberries so many times now that they are fast and easy for me to do.  I'm also taking a family favorite Couscous and Black Bean Salad to the party that I haven't made in a long time.  I'd forgotten how good this salad recipe is!  This was a great occasion to make it again.  There will be 40 people at the party we are going to so it might get lost in the shuffle but if we end up bringing home a lot of leftover, I don't mind since we all love this recipe in my family and will eat it up immediately. 

The strawberries I bought to make the chocolate covered strawberries were not super sweet and they actually we not even that big. I just felt like making them for fun.  Therefore, today I learned that if you want to make chocolate covered strawberries and can't find the super big, ripe, sweet, juicy strawberries that are only available at certain times of the year, make them anyway and buy regular strawberries.  The key is to make sure you put lots of white chocolate drizzle over them.  The white chocolate is the sweetest chocolate, moreso than the dark chocolate.  I made them the exact same way I did on my original post here.  I was also going to make them more red, white and blue by coloring the white chocolate, which I did, but I didn't use it because I think they look better with less.  Sometimes less is more, if you know what I mean.  I think the red, white, and blue sprinkles are very effective without added colored drizzle. So, I still dipped them all in the dark chocolate and used A LOT of white chocolate drizzle.  I think that is the key to successful chocolate covered strawberries with mediocre flavored strawberries. I'll see how people react to them tonight at the party.   But I've taste-tested them and they passed my judgment with no hesitation!  And even though the strawberries are not that outstanding, hey...they look great and festive, for sure.  It's the Fourth of July and I need to bring something to show for it.  I can now add Chocolate Covered Strawberries to my list.   

Hope you all have a wonderful Fourth.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Oatmeal, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't have very many gluten-free cookies on my blog because quite frankly, I usually don't like gluten-free.  But occasionally, I do find a good recipe and this is one that is from the back of the Trader Joe's oatmeal and it's a good one.  My friend brought some over to our house last weekend when Nick and family were here for our birthday celebrations  and we all loved them. My friend lives a few blocks away and we walk the neighborhood together on weekends.  We can easily go 5 miles in no time, talking non-stop.  She loves exploring our neighborhood as much as I do and we discover so many favorite little spots.  We even found a property with a horse (or more like a pony, I should say.)   The views are always quite lovely, too.  Bruce and I had our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary on July 18th and I made a point of walking past the house where we had our wedding reception.  I told my friend, "Thirty-nine years ago today, t...

Meatloaf by Mark Bittman

Once again, I turned on the television yesterday and saw that Mark Bittman was on the Today show and was making his version of  meatloaf .  This must be meatloaf season.  It was surprisingly similar to the  Pioneer Woman's version  who was also recently on.   I was a little surprised of his version because Mark Bittman is into healthy eating and has lost a lot of weight and improved his health by changing his diet which he writes about in his book,  Food Matters .  His meatloaf recipe also included bacon and cheese!  I must be doing something wrong.  The thing to remember, which he writes about in his book, is that you can eat healthy without going extreme or changing your whole life.    If you don't know who Mark Bittman is, he is a food writer and a four star chef with multiple cookbooks who loves to eat but changed his food philosophy to improve his health.  He tells his story in Food Matters and provides ...

Top Pot Doughnuts

I just returned from another weekend in Seattle and for the first time, I actually went to a Top Pot Doughnut shop.  I've had their doughnuts before because they serve them at Starbuck's and I've seen their shops in Seattle when I visit because there is now one right across the street from our old house in Wedgwood.   Now, our daughter, lives in another old neighborhood of mine on Capitol Hill and right around the corner from her house is a Top Pot. There were not eateries like this in my old neighborhoods when I lived in Seattle.  And our daughter literally lives steps away from my old house on Capitol Hill where I lived when I was her age.  There are so many more luxuries and temptations lurking around the corner in Seattle neighborhoods more so than when I lived there but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  Being that I'm one that mostly gives in to temptation, it's probably a good thing they didn't exist when I lived there. ...