Calling All Foodies: The 1st Annual Brooklyn Local in DUMBO and Twice Baked Potatoes with Baby Shrimp and Artichoke Hearts

This Saturday, September 17, I’m proud to be a participant in the 1st Annual Brooklyn Local organized by City Harvest.    The event is from 11-4 and will be held at the Tobacco Warehouse in DUMBO (for non New Yorkers, this stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass).  Over 75 artisinal vendors will be selling their wares, and there will be a tasting tent featuring 15 of the best restaurants in Brooklyn.  There will be an Interactive Kids’ Zone with all day events, such as cookie decorating, composting, live music, and I will be reading from my book, Soup Day, there at 11:30 AM and 1:30 PM.  I’ll also have a craft table set up to do some collaging with the children.  Soup Day will be sold along with a slew of celebrity chef cookbooks.

Please come and join us if you are in the area and help contribute to a great cause.  The Market Entry Fee is just $5 and the money will go towards helping to stamp out hunger in the city.  I’d love to see you!  Last weekend at the Princeton Book Festival, I got such a kick out of meeting a reader in person! 🙂

Cooking Light Magazine is one of the sponsors of the event, and their Executive Chef, Billy Strynkowski, will also be there on site handing out samples.  I got to meet Chef Billy last year at the Cooking Light photo shoot, when I made my dish in his test kitchen.  This year, I’ll be sure to get a picture with him!

Another Cooking Light venture I’m excited to be a part of is their Tested and Recommended Blogger Network.  I’ll be trying out some of their recipes and sharing them with you.  I’d be doing this anyway, since I love their recipes.  I’ve been a subscriber for many years and through reading the magazine, I’ve learned so much about how to lighten as well as create my own healthy recipes.

The recipes I’m featuring today are built around potatoes.  In some circles, potatoes get a bad rap, but they are actually quite nutritious, fat free, sodium free, and cholesterol free!  I hadn’t known it before, but a potato provides 45% of your daily does of vitamin C, and when eaten with the skin, it has MORE potassium than a banana!  Because of this, they are now recognized as a vegetable to meet the important need for potassium by the new My Plate Guidelines of the USDA.  Who knew?

Anyway, I love them because they are one of the veggies that we all love in our picky eater family and they are incredibly inexpensive to boot.  For more fun facts about potatoes and tasty recipes, check out Potato Goodness, and Potatoes, Taters, and Spuds on Facebook.

I recently posted about my favorite potato salad, made with yellow and red potatoes.   This baby is made so flavorful with tons of fresh herbs, Dijon mustard, wine, and olive oil.  You would never know I lightened it up dramatically by cutting the oil in half (actually if you used all the oil called for in the original recipe, it gets a bit “soupy”!)

These would also be yummy with some extra grated cheese on top!

Last night I made Twice Baked Potato with Baby Shrimp, Green Onions, and Roasted Red Pepper.  Only I changed it by exchanging the red peppers for artichoke hearts since my husband and son don’t do peppers.  I also subbed plain non fat yogurt for the sour cream since I have an intolerance to it!  I really liked the combination of the potatoes and the baby shrimp — something I would never have thought to put together.  The artichoke hearts went well with all the flavors as well.  And, we ate everything up including the skins, so we had our potassium for the day! 🙂

Twice Baked Potato with Baby Shrimp, Green Onions, and Roasted Red Peppers

Potato Board, Cooking Light Tested & Recommended eBlast to 150k, August 23, 2011

Ingredients

5 large baking potatoes

½ pound, peeled, deveined, and cooked baby shrimp

½ cup jarred roasted red peppers, diced

¼ cup green onions, chopped

1 cup reduced-fat sour cream

¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons butter

¼ cup fresh parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place potatoes on baking sheet and bake until fork-tender, about 50 minutes to 1 hour. Let potatoes cool. Keep oven on.
3. Peel one potato, discard skin, and place pulp in large bowl. Cut off the top third of the remaining four potatoes. Using a spoon, scoop the potato pulp from the potatoes into the bowl, leaving a 1/8-inch layer on inside of the skin. Return cut potato skin shells to baking sheet.
4. Mash potatoes until chunky, using a handheld potato masher. Add remaining ingredients and mix to combine.
5. Evenly divide potato mixture, and carefully spoon into potato skins.
6. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot.