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A Night Out With Chattavore at AllSouth

July 15, 2016

AllSouth Appliance hosted the first Night Out with Chattavore at their Chattanooga showroom on June 28, 2016. We had a great turnout and an awesome night! | Chattavore.com

AllSouth Appliance hosted the first Night Out with Chattavore at their Chattanooga showroom on June 28, 2016. We had a great turnout and an awesome night! Keep scrolling for a giveaway from AllSouth.
A Night Out With Chattavore
Back in November 2015, I attended the Southern Food Blogger Retreat in Prattville, Alabama. It was an amazing weekend of hanging out with – and learning from – other fantastic food bloggers from the South. While I was there, I got to meet Leah from AllSouth Appliance (that’s her in the picture just below this paragraph), which sponsored our opening night reception. AllSouth likes to work with local bloggers to do fun events in their stores, and Leah was looking for a blogger to work with their Chattanooga showroom, which had just opened a couple of months before. We talked and agreed that I would join the ranks of some amazing bloggers – Christy Jordan of Southern Plate (Huntsville), Stacey Little of Southern Bite (Montgomery), and Stephanie Parker of Plain Chicken (Birmingham).
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My first event with AllSouth was the Tri-State Home Show back in February, but then Leah and I started talking about events in the showroom. Our first event, a Southern cooking class in April, didn’t work out due to lack of interest (bad timing? cost? Not sure. But we’ll try a class again at some point in the future). Leah and I decided to try a free event – a Night Out With Chattavore – where I would just cook for the crowd. This time was a huge success!
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For the first night out with Chattavore, I started with warm pimento cheese with crackers for dipping. That was followed by bacon and cheese party sandwiches with honey-sesame broccoli salad, and we finished the meal off with my fluffy banana pudding. I think everyone was pretty happy with the food and no one left hungry!
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Since it was the first night out with Chattavore, I was a little nervous at first. I’ve never cooked in front of a crowd – not like that, anyway! I kind of felt like I was on Emeril Live (who remembers that show?) and should be yelling, “BAM!” every few minutes. I didn’t. I found my groove after a few minutes, anyway, and I felt like I could be the star of my own cooking show. It was amazing to meet some long-time loyal followers and put faces with names, as well as seeing old friends and meeting some completely new folks.
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I also just want to take a second to give some love to my friends at AllSouth Appliance. They have been so welcoming to me and I feel so blessed to become part of the AllSouth family. If you live in or near Chattanooga, Huntsville, Birmingham, or Montgomery, go talk to these guys about your new appliances. The level of service and knowledge that they are able to give you is superior to any chain store you might visit. They have appliances for every budget, so if you’re on a teacher’s budget like me, don’t let the fancy appliances in the kitchen scare you. The amazing thing is that they can demo and teach you about all of their appliances. I went by last week and got a lesson on using all the appliances in the kitchen. As I was leaving, Kevin, the manager, told me that it was my kitchen to cook in any time I wanted. Naturally, I dropped my groceries by the next day (just kidding!).

If you are interested in learning more about AllSouth Appliance, check out their website or their Facebook page!

The second Night Out with Chattavore will be on Thursday, September 8th, 2016 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Mark your calendars now for a fun night with great food! I’m thinking Mexican, but if you have other ideas, tell me in the comments below!??

Also: AllSouth Appliance is giving away one RED KITCHENAID 5-SPEED BLENDER to one reader. In order to be eligible for the giveaway, you must: like AllSouth on Facebook, like Chattavore on Facebook, and comment on this post (be sure to leave an email address where I can reach you and comment under the name that you use on Facebook)! The winner will be chosen on Friday, 7/22! (Photo below courtesy of KitchenAid). Congratulations to Erica Anderson, the winner of the blender giveaway!

AllSouth Appliance hosted the first Night Out with Chattavore at their Chattanooga showroom on June 28, 2016. We had a great turnout and an awesome night! | Chattavore.com
A Night Out with Chattavore Pin

Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: writing By Mary // Chattavore 40 Comments

Eating Mindfully: A Learning Process

May 25, 2016

Eating mindfully is not something that comes naturally to me, but it's a process that I'm slowly working through to help me lead a healthier lifestyle. | chattavore.com

Eating mindfully is not something that comes naturally to me, but it’s a process that I’m slowly working through to help me lead a healthier lifestyle.
Eating mindfully is not something that comes naturally to me, but it's a process that I'm slowly working through to help me lead a healthier lifestyle. | chattavore.com
One of the best things about being a food blogger is that it gives me a reason to constantly try new restaurants and new recipes. Conversely, this is one of the downsides of being a food blogger too. My life revolves around cooking, baking, and looking for new restaurants to try.

Until 2014, this wasn’t really a problem. As a teacher, I was in constant motion, moving around my classroom and leading groups of children up and down the long hallways of the school. I was also a runner (though I hated it) so that helped too. Then I got a different job, as a behavior analyst. These days, I spend my days either sitting in meetings, sitting in classrooms talking to teachers, or sitting in my car, shuttling myself from one place to another (I drive hundreds of miles a month for my job).

It didn’t take long for my weight to creep up once my habits changed, and it didn’t take much for me to figure out what happened. I changed my activity levels but I didn’t change my eating habits. It’s problematic. I thought about going Paleo, but ultimately I decided that it wouldn’t work for me because (a) my blog readers don’t come here for Paleo recipes; and (b) I just don’t think I could do it. Then I realized something: I’m a member of the clean plate club. I can match my husband, who is 8 inches taller than me, bite for bite. Ummmm, this might explain a lot.

I am not overweight, and I don’t have a problem with the way I look. That’s not what this is about. What it’s about, though, is realizing that such a rapid weight gain is not healthy and that if I continue at this rate I will be overweight and will be setting myself up for health problems. Something had to change.

A couple of months ago I ran across a book called How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too by Josie Spinardi. In the book, Spinardi talks about the deprivation mentality; that is, when you spend your life dieting, when you stop dieting (or if you accidentally “slip up” and eat something that you’ve been avoiding on your diet) then you are very likely to binge on those forbidden foods. Now, this didn’t apply to me…I’ve never believed in deprivation and have always allowed myself to eat the things that I wanted to eat in moderation. (Sorry for the dark photo…it’s a screen shot from my Kindle)
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No, my problem is that I’ve kind of slipped out of the “moderation” mindset and just started eating as much of whatever as I wanted, whenever I wanted. The book talks about eating mindfully…stopping to think about what you are eating, taste what you are eating, and take note of how it makes you feel. When you are no longer hungry, you stop eating. What? That’s awfully simple. You eat whatever you want, till you aren’t hungry, and if you aren’t depriving yourself then you probably aren’t going to feel the need to binge on typically “forbidden” foods.

After 3 weeks of eating this way, I’ve lost 5 pounds. Eating mindfully is still a process. Sometimes food just tastes so good that I don’t want to stop eating it. Sometimes I know that this is going to happen, so I decide ahead of time how much I’m going to eat (half of a sandwich, for example). After I’ve eaten that much, I really think about whether I want to eat more because I’m still hungry or because I just want to keep eating. If it’s just because I want to keep eating, the other half of the sandwich becomes the next day’s lunch. No need to pack another lunch. Eating mindfully is a lunch-packing WIN!

I love fruits and vegetables, so eating “healthy foods” is not the problem for me. Eating junk food is also not the problem, per se. It’s eating too much of the junk food – even the homemade junk food, which most of mine is, that’s the problem. With this method, I still get to eat whatever I want…just less of it. It’s a win-win. I highly recommend Spinardi’s book (which I purchased for myself and did not receive any compensation to endorse)! (This post does, however, contain an affiliate link for her book. This means that if you click that link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. The cost to you will not be affected. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!)

Have you tried eating mindfully? What’s your strategy for maintaining a healthy weight and diet?

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: writing By Mary // Chattavore Leave a Comment

Eating In: Lessons from a Month-long Restaurant Fast

May 11, 2016

We spent the month of April eating in. I learned a few things, some surprising, others not so much. Here's what I discovered during my restaurant fast. | chattavore.com

We spent the month of April eating in. I learned a few things, some surprising, others not so much. Here’s what I discovered during my restaurant fast.

We spent the month of April eating in. I learned a few things, some surprising, others not so much. Here's what I discovered during my restaurant fast. | chattavore.com
We don’t go out to excessively, but since part of my work in this space is writing about restaurants, we do it on a regular basis-usually on Saturdays. Sometimes we’ll grab something quick on a weeknight when I just can’t bring myself to cook (it happens to the best of us). So, eating in is our usual M.O., but I decided that I wanted to see how long we could make it. A month seemed like a reasonable goal, so we went for it.

Overall, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Naturally, the first week was the most difficult. I didn’t do a very good job of planning my lunches and ran into several days when I didn’t have time to sit down somewhere and eat. I was tempted – very tempted – to run through the Wendy’s drive-thru to order off the value menu. I didn’t, though, and I did a better job after that of packing things that fit the schedule that I knew I was going to have for the week. No time to stop? Nothing that needs a fork.

Two weeks in, we had to make a choice. Philip ran over something on Hixson Pike and we ended up with a flat tire. We had been planning to get new tires soon anyway, so we took our car to Sear’s to get new tires. So…we were stuck at the mall for five hours. No joke. We had eaten before we got there, but we knew we were going to have to wait a while longer and we were feeling pretty hungry. So…we ended up eating out. Yep. I really only made it two weeks…and then another two weeks. I decided that I couldn’t be too obsessive. I would have cooked if we had been at home, but we weren’t. No big deal.

I learned that it’s a good idea to keep frozen pizzas and frozen taco meat around. On those nights that I just don’t feel like cooking, in the past we might have gone to Zaxby’s or El Metate, but during our month of eating in, those places weren’t options. A frozen pizza can be a life saver when you just can’t bring yourself to pull out a hundred ingredients to make a meal.

Eating in for a month is what encouraged me to jump in and start using my pressure cooker (aka Instant Pot <–affiliate link). With my pressure cooker, I can just throw some things into the pot, run downstairs to work out, and have dinner ready when I get done. Like I mentioned in my pressure cooker pork shoulder post, it’s like having dinner in the slow cooker…except I don’t have to think about it at 7:30 in the morning.

After the first week, it actually got way easier. For week two and week three, I really didn’t think about eating out (except during the tire incident). Since going out to eat wasn’t an option, I knew that we were going to have to make dinner at home and didn’t even let my mind drift there.

By week four of eating in, though, I think I was getting a little antsy. Even though I was perfectly happy with cooking, I think not having the option of going out to eat started getting a little old. I was thinking about chicken fingers and fries (I mentioned Zaxby’s earlier in the post, I know…I’d been craving Zaxby’s since before we started the challenge). It wasn’t too bad, though, and I made it.

Someone asked me if I lost weight during my month of eating in. I did…I lost five pounds. I have been working on “mindful eating” after reading the book How to Have Your Cake and Your Skinny Jeans Too (<–affiliate link), so overall I’ve been eating quite a bit less. I never really thought I was eating that much, but it turns out that being a member of the Clean-Plate Club is the reason that I’ve gained weight. ? But anyway…I don’t think that my weight loss was a direct result of eating in, but it definitely didn’t hurt.

What’s your longest “eating in” record?

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click through a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission. This does not affect the cost to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: writing By Mary // Chattavore 1 Comment

Top Kitchen Tools in My House

April 27, 2016

I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com

I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house!

I am a kitchen gadget fanatic.  Try as I might to cull the ever-growing craziness that flows from my kitchen cabinets, counters, and shelves….it’s a losing battle.  I can’t stop, and when I get rid of something, I have to replace it with something else.  There are a few that I probably don’t use enough to really justify keeping them around, but when you are DIY-er like I am, you can stand to have a stash of useful tools.  Still, there are some I use more than others.  Here are the 10 top kitchen tools in my house, including small appliances.

10) KitchenAid food processor.  After using a basic, no frills Cuisinart for years, I ran into this one dirt-cheap at Tuesday morning.  It has a mini work bowl, a dough blade (that I’ll admit I never use, since I make all my dough in my stand mixer), and shredding/slicing disks. I use it for salsa, pesto, hummus, pastry doughs, etc., etc. Plus when I have a ton of cheese or cabbage to shred it makes my life so much easier.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
9)  Vitamix. I had a pretty nice KitchenAid blender before, but when Philip came home with this baby I was beside myself. I use it mostly to make smoothies, salsa, and dressings, but you can use it for any number of things…including making soup. Like, from start to finish. That’s how fast the motor runs – it heats the food up eventually. You can even get a special container for grinding grains (I haven’t made it to that point yet). The Vitamix is pricey, but I have heard of people who have owned theirs since the seventies. If you do a lot of blending, this will be your kitchen workhorse.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
8)  My KitchenAid stand mixer.  Not only can I mix things in it…but when I have über thick bread doughs that are too exhausting to stir by hand, I use it for bread dough.  I also make ice cream in it, and use it to whip cream.  Oh, and I grind meat with it (using a special attachment).  I have the grain mill attachment but I’ll admit that I don’t use it much, and one of these days (when I’m a lot wealthier!) I’m going to get the pasta roller attachment.  By the way, the one in the link is very similar to mine, but a little bit bigger and a little more expensive.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
7)  Instant Pot. This is a new one. I got it for Christmas last year and I am pretty much obsessed with it. It’s a pressure cooker, a slow cooker, a rice cooker, a saute pot, a steamer, a yogurt maker….it’s pretty much amazing. I’ve been working on developing some pressure cooker recipes, so I can’t wait to share them with you. I am so glad I asked for this handy-dandy tool…I use it at least twice a week.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
6)  A kitchen scale. I know a lot of people probably think that I’m crazy, but I use my kitchen scale every single day. I use it for cooking, baking, and weighing out nuts, chips, etc. to pack in my lunch (I’m really not obsessive about portions, but it’s really easy to over-do it).

5)  Metal half-sheet pans.  I have three and I want more.  I buy them for like $9 at the restaurant supply store.  They’re strong and sturdy and a much higher quality than the much more flimsy and much more expensive ones that you can purchase at Target, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, etc.

4)  I have ten different mixing bowls in nine different sizes and I use them all frequently, sometimes simultaneously. And I need more, to be perfectly honest with you.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
3)  Wooden spoons and spatulas.  Lots and lots of wooden spoons and spatulas.  Actually, most of mine are bamboo, which I love because I can stick them in the dishwasher.  They’re super sturdy and they’re great for stirring in my nonstick cookware.  I use them every single day.

2)  My Shun knives.  Philip bought me a set for my birthday several years back and completed it with a slicer last year.  They are sharp and gorgeous and decorate my wall on the magnetic strip better than any purchased art could.  I am totally obsessed with honing them.  The odds are good that I’ll never have to purchase another set of knives.  They were expensive but totally worth it.  If you don’t have good knives, know that they’re worth the cost to have good, sharp knives (dull knives are a real danger in the kitchen!).  Do it!
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
1) Lodge Cast Iron.  Lodge is manufactured 50 miles from my house, so I feel like I’m supporting local business when I buy Lodge (and I usually buy it from their factory store, located right by the manufacturing facility, so even better!). I have the skillets in four different sizes, from 6 inches to 12 inches, a 6-quart Dutch oven, and several gratin dishes. It’s the best stuff in the world…indestructible, conducts the heat well, etc. There’s no better vessel for making a burger or a pan of cornbread.
I have more kitchen gadgets than I can count, but some get more use than others. Here are the top kitchen tools in my house! | list from Chattavore.com
It’s quite a collection I’ve amassed over the years.  These are the things I use daily or weekly…my top kitchen tools.

What are your top kitchen tools?

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click the link and make a purchase, I will make a small commission. This does not affect the price to you. For more information, please see my disclosures. Thank you for supporting my blog!

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: lists, writing By Mary // Chattavore 10 Comments

Guilty Pleasure Foods – Chattavore Top Ten

March 30, 2016

We all have guilty pleasure foods that we can't resist. This is a list of foods that I can't keep in the house, or I'll eat all of it. What are your guilty pleasure foods? | list from Chattavore.com

We all have guilty pleasure foods that we can’t resist. This is a list of foods that I can’t keep in the house, or I’ll eat all of it. What are your guilty pleasure foods?
We all have guilty pleasure foods that we can't resist. This is a list of foods that I can't keep in the house, or I'll eat all of it. What are your guilty pleasure foods? | list from Chattavore.com
1.  Kettle Chips

Topping my list of guilty pleasure foods is kettle chips. If I’m going with chips (besides my homemade microwave chips), these are definitely my first choice.  Preferably Kettle Brand, but I’ll really eat any kettle-cooked chips I can get my hands on. In my mind, they really aren’t all that bad….they only have three ingredients (potatoes, oil, and salt) and they taste so good they couldn’t possibly be bad.  The problem is that once I start eating them I can’t stop.  My justification is that “I need to get them out of the house”.  Because it’s obviously better to eat them all at once and have them gone than to eat them a few at a time…right?

2.  Salt & Vinegar or Dill Pickle Lay’s

Actually, I don’t think that they make the dill pickle variety anymore.  It’s been ages since I bought a bag of Lay’s potato chips.  Not because they’re “bad” but because the flavored varieties usually only come in gigantic bags.  It’s dangerous to have these in the house.  I used to buy bags of chips for Philip to parse out to take in his lunch, and every time we would have salt & vinegar or dill pickle chips, I would eat them until my mouth burned and the corners of my mouth started to crack from the salt and the acidity of the vinegar.

3.  Nacho or Taco Doritos

Okay, does anyone see a pattern here?  Chips are my weakness…my trigger food…my kryptonite.  They are literally the only food that I just can’t. Stop. Eating.  My number one guilty pleasure, for sure. I love Doritos.  Love them, love them, love them.  I know they have approximately 18,000 ingredients.  You know what?  I don’t care.  I love the fact that the orange cheese powder coats my fingers. It’s like second snack.  I cannot cannot cannot purchase these in a large bag to bring home with me.  I only eat them in a restaurant (say, Subway or Firehouse Subs) where I can purchase a small bag and not see them again once I have finished my meal. By the way, I recently discovered that my cat loves them too. Weirdo.

4.  Boxed Cake Mix

I don’t do it very often.  It’s hard to justify.  But when I make cake balls, it’s much easier to just mix up a cake from a box and stir in some canned icing.  I love to scrape all of the excess batter out of the bowl and straight into my mouth (I married someone who doesn’t care for this practice-what?  Who doesn’t like cake batter?!?!-so more for me!).

5.  Homemade Cream Cheese Icing

This is a guilty pleasure that I share with my mom and my sister.  If you’ve ever had cream cheese icing out of a can, you know that there is no comparison to the homemade stuff.  Cream cheese + butter + powdered sugar = perfection.  If I could get away with it, I would make an entire batch just for eating with a spoon.  I think that would probably evoke the evil eye from my husband, so it’s doubtful that this is ever going to happen.  Plus there’s the whole problem of needing to fit into my jeans….but can you imagine a world where you could just eat cream cheese icing with a spoon and never gain an ounce?  That’s the way it’s going to be in Heaven.  I’m sure of it.

6.  Bacon

Duh.  I don’t know that I can really call this a “guilty” pleasure because I really don’t feel all that guilty about it.  I probably should, though.  Bacon is a perfect food.  It’s salty candy.  And it’s practically religion in this house.

7.  Crusty Bread Dipped in Olive Oil

So, bread and olive oil may not seem like a “guilty pleasure” food to many of you, but when you consider the volumes of it that I could eat, it might.  I can throw this stuff down.  Carb and fat overload, I tell you.  And let’s be honest, wheat bread generally doesn’t make the cut for this purpose.  Oh boy.  This is my favorite thing about going to Tony’s (where they serve garlic-studded ciabatta with an olive/canola oil mix).

8.  Peppermint Patties

I remember my grandmother buying these when I was a kid. These days, they’re in my freezer at all times. I buy the minis and eat them, one at a time, each night. I don’t eat a lot of candy but this is a 50-calorie indulgence. Like bacon, I call this a guilty pleasure but honestly I really don’t feel all that guilty about it. I ❤️ peppermint anything. I tried to make my own peppermint patties and it didn’t go so well. I’ll keep buying them, thanks.

9.  Cheese

I’m pretty much an equal opportunity cheese lover, as long as it’s a cow’s milk cheese.  Goat and sheep milk cheeses have not quite grown on me yet.  I won’t lie, since Philip and I started eating less meat, I pretty much eat cheese every day.  I do portion it carefully, but still.  The sharpest cheddars are probably my favorite, especially when I make a grilled cheese and some of the cheese falls into the pan and burns.  I love to eat those little burnt cheese crusts.  Mmmmmm.  Chips and queso?  Well, think about that one….two of my weaknesses rolled into one.  Stick a fork in me…..

10.  Firehouse Subs Cherry Limeade

Really, Firehouse Subs anything (I usually order the steamer, with pastrami and melted cheese…gah). But there is something about that giant cup of high-fructose syrup sweetened non-carbonated cherry drink with a bunch of limes squeezed into it. Philip and I are both addicted and we can look right past that sugar rush to slurp down this syrupy sweet but still a little tart goodness. If you ever see me looking like a kid who’s been slurping cherry Kool-aid, you’ll know where I’ve been.

Can any of you commiserate with me on any of my guilty pleasure foods?  Do you have anything to add?  Tell me your guilty pleasure foods – inquiring minds want to know!

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: lists, writing By Mary // Chattavore 21 Comments

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About Chattavore

Hi, I'm Mary! Welcome to Chattavore, a destination for people who want to feed themselves and their families well every day! Life can be crazy, which means that getting dinner on the table can be a challenge (more often than not!) and my mission is to take all your favorite recipes and figure out how to serve them on a Tuesday.

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