Ingredient: Juniper Berries

"A medium dry martini, lemon peel. Shaken, not stirred." - Sean Connery as James Bond 

James knew the secret to a good martini, not the shaken or stirred part but the gin. Now if you know me you know I am a Scotch Whiskey man myself but even I have to admit that on a hot summer day nothing can taste better than a cold class of gin and tonic. It's the fresh taste that gin has, I just love it. To break it down even more what I love about gin is the Juniper. It's right there in your face clean flavor.

Juniper berries are not something that you'll find in everyone's spice rack but you can find at pretty much any mega mart grocery store. They are almost a staple in Scandinavian food and when paired with meat...well let's just say it's divine. Typically you'd see juniper paired with wild game meat but as I'm not a hunter and don't really know anyone who is I've not tried them in that context. However I've used them with pork, beef and turkey. The wonderful thing about the berries is that they add such an unexpected flavor.

Now you know a little bit about Juniper berries lets dive into an easy way to incorporate them into your foods.

The Juniper Jump

First take your favorite stew recipe (I used this one from TheWay The Cookie Crumbles but subbed beef for lamb)
When you are adding your aromatics (thyme, rosemary, sage etc...) throw in 3-4 crushed juniper berries to the mix as well.

It's that easy!
Then sit back and allow your family and/or friends to shower you with culinary praise! I believe the key to good home cooking is the flavors, we get so used to the same tastes. This will be sure to shake up the taste buds and add a new depth to your cooking!

Reimagining the Blog

I know it’s been a long time posting a couple years but I had some issues in life come up…you know graduating college, losing a 5 year relationship, leaving a bad situation, starting a career so on a so forth! But I have a reimagining of a blog and I wanted to try it on for size!

I am inspired by all the food/cooking blogs out there especially I must say I love Noble Pig! She really introduced me into the cooking blogosphere and I love her for it. Please look her up and if you are into Wine buy a bottle or two from her. I will be soon! But I also want to give mention to Smitten Kitchen, Mama Loves Food, gimme some oven, Ceramic Canvas, and finally Picky Palate.

Now I don’t want to model my blog just like the ones I love to read, first and foremost I don’t get to cook that often :0( I have plenty of ideas though. I also am a kind of coinsure (read: snob) of that fine barley malt most commonly known as Scotch. Not to mention I live in Minneapolis and we do have some excellent and reasonably priced restaurants that I would love to talk about and talk up! I will try to post every couple days or so but it may be a week between posts. I will do my best!

So that’s the premise for this reimaging of my blog…let me see my notes here…I was told I should write what I expect from my blog as the creator. Well I think that I expect that no one will read this haha. I think that if anyone reads this it will be people from the Twin Cities. I suppose they will be drawn to it for the restaurant reviews, probably linked from some other site. In the end I figure if I get only one reader I’ll be excited. Enjoy!

New Blog Site

I have decided to move out of the myspace arena and create my own little place in the blogosphere. With this move I hope to write a new blog every couple of days. What the topics will be is still up in the air. Seeing as I am interested in books and history, in movies and TV, technology and so much more I can say that you may just see a little bit of everything.
I would ask that if you take the time to read the post then please take the time to post a comment or response. It takes only a moment more to write a little "good job" or "I agree/disagree you arrogant fool!"
After several posts let me know how I'm doing. I will ask this again but I'm just warning you to keep a critical eye on. So... thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy my new blog!

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I your humble Moderator.