If your repertoire for cantaloupe is limited to slicing and eating on a plate consider the following:

• Cantaloupe Based Organic Fruit Salad (made with Cantaloupe, Strawberries, Pineapple, Blueberries and Banana)
• Cantaloupe Ice Pops (made with Cantaloupe, water, sugar and mint leaves)
• Cantaloupe Martini (made with pureed cantaloupe, water, sugar & lime mixed with Vodka & Midori)

Not only are there many foods we haven’t tried but many different ways to serve the foods we now love. Go ahead, be fearless. Laugh at your mistakes and delight in your successes.

First, get yourself some FRESH, Organic, Free-Range Chicken. … Expensive yes, but great food simply starts with great ingredients. Now if money’s really tight go ahead and buy your manufactured chicken (eye roll). Next, just trim off the fat and prep your fry pan. .. I like to go with a heavy bottom copper clad stainless, works well for me.

Place a small amount of cooking oil in the center of the pan and spread/wipe/coat the pan with this using a paper towel. What you want here is a thin coating of oil. The paper towel will help you coat and soak up the excess. You don’t want your chicken sopping in oil. Crank up the stove to a high heat, turn on the stove fan/vent and add your chicken breast. … Keep and eye on things and keep it safe. … Now’s the time when I do what I do best, nothing. Hold yourself back and resist your temptation to check or move the chicken until the side is done. 

With my particular stove and pan I have learned that seven minutes of undisturbed frying will give me the perfect sear. And this is repeatable. One of the things I do is to buy chicken breast of approximately the same weight every time. This helps in providing a repeatable cooking cycle. .. So while the chicken is cooking with NO help from me I can work on my side dishes or whatever. But it’s aways a good idea to set a timer so you don’t loose track of time and forget about it. .. So bottom line, you’ll have to cook this a few times to determine how long it takes to cook each side. Just use a 1/2 pound breast and cook the first side for seven minutes as a start and refine your times from there.  But remember one of the keys to doing this right is to not disturb the chicken. Just let it cook and don’t be checking it. If left undisturbed a nice sear will occur. If you flip too early it will be “not-good”. So again, it may take you a few times cooking this to really get it down.

OK, once my seven minutes is over I flip the chicken breast with a spatula and set the timer for 5 1/2 minutes. …. After this times out I remove the pan from the heat and place the chicken breast on a cutting board. Now what I generally do is to slice it and then place each slice back in the pan (which being heavy bottomed is still hot) slice side down. Put the pan back on to a medium heat. I give this a minute or two to cook and flip the pieces and give it a minute or two more. The reason for doing this is that often the center of the chicken is not fully cooked. This completes the cooking.

Take your thickest piece out and cut to check that it’s cooked. Then out of the pan and serve. Try to get to the point where you can time things to be ready together. From pan to plate is the best. … Anyway what you now have an a terrific low calorie, protein dense, clean (not all oily) and great tasting chicken. Of course you can in the process of cooking spice things up as you like (careful of the spice smoking…had someone put cayenne on the chicken while cooking once and it started smoking really bad, eyes watering like being pepper sprayed or something..) or you can store the chicken in the frig so that you’re good to go for a grilled chicken salad when the time is right.

Anyway hope you enjoy, eat well, be healthy, have fun!

 First, the price for a 65 oz. jar was $5.66. Nice. .. Especially when you look at how much those small jars of the non-organic salsas cost.

 Next, ingredients. This stuff contains (all these are organic) .. tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, tomato paste, cilantro, sugar, vinegar, cumin, garlic and cayenne. It also contains water and citric acid. By the way, the organic ingredients just listed were by order of amount contained in the Organic Salsa. Water was in a lesser amount than the tomatoes, jalapenos & onions. That’s Nice. .. Should be a good thick salsa.

 Opened it up and you’ll find that it really is a nice thick and chunky salsa and not some watered down soupy thing. .. Taste… kicks butt. A really nice and full flavored salsa. And the type we reviewed was the medium and it was in no way over the top in terms of heat. And if you want to spice it up with seasoning and fresh peppers you can easily knock yourself out by using this as a base to make your own signature organic salsa (… a good idea for a future post).

 This stuff also is impressive nutritionally. For a full two tablespoons it has only 10 calories (however, beware, it does have 220 mg of sodium if you are watching this). Why does this impress me? Because you are getting a great bang for the calorie in terms of taste enhancement of your dishes.

 Now I use this on everything. Nothing against ketchup but for my taste it’s totally lame in comparison. Soupy, nothing going on. Now with the Costco Organic Salsa,  I put it on my egg white omelettes and many other dishes. It not only tastes great, but I’m eating a nice variety of things and that my friends is definitely a good thing. I’m thinking that this is a product you want to have on hand as BBQ Season starts.

 So, in summary, thumbs up for this Salsa with low cost, organic ingredients and great taste.