A childhood favorite candy of mine was spearmint leaves. They are leaf shaped gel like candies with a refreshing spearmint flavor. They are lightly coated in crunchy sugar and the gel candy doesn’t seem too sweet, it’s minty refreshing. I remember they were my candy of choice for when I went out to the movies. Each leaf could last a very long time and they seemed the most satisfying out of the candy choices to eat during a movie for me because they didn’t give you that sugar sickness feeling like the chocolate coated mints do when you ate a bunch of them. You could also eat them real slow because they didn’t forking melt.The spearmint leaves came in a white box with pretty spearmint leaves on it and if I remember correctly the spearmint leaves were made by the leaf candy company but many other companies today still make spearmint leaves. They just aren’t all naturally flavored these forking days.

Then one day fourteen years ago we brought home this forking adorable puppy from the S.P.C.A.

This special puppy one day chewed threw my purse to get to my mint gum and I found him siting there just chewing my gum. (of course I forking removed the gum from his mouth)

A short time latter I kissed him goodbye as I was leaving to go to work and faster than lightening he stole a mint from my mouth with out me feeling a thing with his quick tongue. Another time after that as I was getting a mint from the cabinet the puppy would bark at me for a mint. After that after breakfast almost every day he’d walk over to the cabinet and bark at the cabinet until someone would give him a mint.

He is grown up and OLD now but is still a dog that is addicted to mints. Often he sits with me while I brush my forking teeth with minty tooth paste.

Addicted to MINTS!

You can only give a very small amount of only certain mints to a large dog safely. So I’d only pinch off a small amount of spearmint leaves for my dog. (just so you know most mints and gums today have chemicals in them that are LETHAL and FATAL to dogs) Spearmint leaves are mostly natural. They are only made with corn syrup, cornstarch, artificial coloring and  natural spearmint oil.  (unless you buy the forking ones from Walgreen’s that are made with artificial flavors).

When I moved to Arizona I found out that it was very difficult to purchase spearmint leaves here. Back east every supermarket and candy store all sold spearmint leaves.

Fry’s, Safeway and Walmart all don’t sell spearmint leaves in my area. Years back I also looked for the spearmint leaves at Albertson’s, Bashas, AJ’s and also Target and haven’t found them at those places either.

Walgreen’s does sell the lower end spearmint leaves but they are the ones with artificial flavor that don’t taste so good.

For a while the only place I could find natural spearmint leaves were at Sprouts.

The Sprouts in my location currently is either out of them or forking stopped selling them to I had to order spearmint leaves on the internet for my dog. If I suddenly stopped giving my 14 year old dog a mint I don’t know what the fork would happen….I think it would be like trying to Forking fry water…….It’s something that can’t be done…..after all you know my dog is really a human trapped in a dog’s body ……So I let my fingers do the forking walking on the internet and I found the mints there so I had to purchase the spearmint leaves that forking way.

That was my forking search for spearmint leaves around Phoenix Arizona.

As a slight update 8-26-15 I wrote this artical May 25th 2015 and three months latter 8-25 -2015 to the day I found that Natural Spearmint Leaves are now being sold at Walgreens with different packaging and Spearmint Leaves have also returned to Sprouts Grocery Store.

The Forking Truth

I found this forking cute gadget at Home Goods. It claims to have many uses. It’s suppose to grind meat, make sausage and pasta too. Beside being cute, machine washable, less than $20, and easy to put together it has a cool suction device that doesn’t actually suck as it  secures the almost non-working machine to any surface.

I didn’t forking even try to grind meat because it really sucked SO FORKING MUCH at just making pasta. First I tried some  spelt pasta and it took me about 50 cranks to put out this much pasta. I sure was forking cranky after this but thought a more traditional 50% semolina 50% flour mixture might do the trick to making some forking pasta.

So I gave forking rigatoni’s a try.

Same forking thing. About 50 FORKING CRANKS for FORKING 3 pieces of forking pasta.

I forking went back to Home Goods and returned this idiotic device because this forking gadget has ZERO Pastabilities in my forking kitchen.

Not Worth a FORK!

The Forking Truth

Red Bell Peppers even OLD ones are versatile.  I always forking stock up on red bell peppers when they are for sale at a great price.

I cut some up, cook them up and freeze them and a roast up a bunch and freeze roasted red bell peppers. I find that when the pepper is old and wrinkled they roast up more even with the easiest to peel off skins and the pepper gets a better roast. It’s sort of the same reasoning on why the best fried chicken is the kind that sits uncovered in the refrigerator for maybe three days and the skin dries out.

After the peppers are roasted (actually broiled all around) The skins come right off and I use the roasted red peppers in a variety of ways.

Muhammara

Muhammara – basically a roasted red pepper dip traditionally made from roasted red peppers, walnuts, spices, pomegranate and thickened with bread. (I made mine with forking almonds and didn’t add the bread)

Roasted Red Pepper hot paste

Timbale

A layer in the Timbale

Hot Sauce

The backbone in red hot sauce.

Spaghetti Squash with Harissa Vinaigrette

Harissa – roasted peppers, tomatoes, lemon and spices

Romanesco Cauliflower with Romesco Sauce

Romesco sauce – roasted red peppers, garlic, almonds, hazelnuts and most people add bread.

With Dinner

Roasted red bell peppers are great with many dinners, a layer in a sandwich, and also stuffed with breakfast fillings.

Piri Piri Style Chicken

Piri Piri Style Chicken is marinated in a spicy pepper sauce.

Piri Piri Style Chicken with piri piri style sauce

Piri Piri is usually  a spicy red pepper sauce with garlic herbs and citrus.

. Red Pesto

Red Pesto – Roasted red peppers, fresh basil, pine nuts, garlic, EVOO and Sardinian Cheese (Fiore  Sardo).

A Red Pistou might be – Roasted red peppers, basil garlic EVOO

Red Bell Peppers even OLD ones are forking Versatile and Delicious!

Forking Truth