Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show

Today was the first day of exhibition at the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show in Atlanta at the Cobb Galleria.

We set up yesterday and this morning bright and early I was there getting ready to cook.

I started with a peanutty chicken salad and it was a hit. It is a simple recipe but finds a great deal of favor from consumers.

I sure needed a dishwasher today but had a sink with a water heater that went from too hot to too cold really fast. I had to wash dishes between every demonstration.

The next demonstration I did a shrimp and mini bowtie pasta with creamy peanut sauce and complimented it with an Asian Cole Slaw recipe that I have yet to do measurements so no recipe but I have to do that and get a recipe card because I sure had to tell a lot of folks about how to make it. The pasta has chopped peanuts cooked in it in the place of pine nuts. The sauce is really easy...a small can of evaporated milk, peanut butter, and salt and pepper and blended with a wisk over medium heat. I sprinkled some Italian Blend cheese over the top.

Washed more dishes!!!

Then I did my new signature recipe which I developed to introduce at this show. It is an Orange/Peanut Oriental Sauce which I served over panbroiled boneless chicken breasts. I use peanut oil for panbroiling.

Leslie had suggested couscous as a simple easy compliment but I had to do something peanutty so I used peanut oil instead of olive oil and chopped some cocktail peanuts and put in the water to boil and then dumped in the couscous and in a couple minutes it was done and boy was I surprised at how that turned out. Never cooked couscous myself and never a peanutty variation.

Everything seemed to be a hit and the show was well worth doing.

Tomorrow Paula Deen will be here. She will be a serious draw to the show. I wish I could get with her and get her to use some of the recipes as she would amend them for her bragging rights.

All my recipes are very consumer friendly and have limited number of resources and have also a shorter prep time. They are convenient.

we gave out a lot of recipes, talked to a lot of folks and had a good day.