recipes

After All, We Eat With Our Eyes…

Nibbles

Last week started out as a week where I just couldn’t be bothered with, well, much of anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Cooking dinner? Necessary. Filming it? Less so. (Part of it was the week, part of it is the aggravation of such a small memory card for my vlogging camera, I need to update it soon!)

But I didn’t like the idea of not doing a video–I actually enjoy putting up videos each week (if nothing else, the novelty hasn’t worn off) so I decided to do a little something different for the menu video and I hope you like it.

Direct link for the feed readers: Draw My Menu, 4.24.16

Now that the trailer’s over, let’s get to the main attraction:

Meals At Home 4/18-4/24

Meals At Home 4/18-4/24

Monday: Grain Salad w/Carrot-Ginger Dressing and a Fried Egg
From Bon Appetempt (and, yes, I realize I left out the second ‘p’ in the video), this was a simple salad with the promised “showstopper” dressing. Being able to make the carrot ginger dressing without miso is a nice change and means we have a new dressing for the salad rotation that also gives us more veggies, too.

Tuesday: Lemon-Parmesan Chicken + Spinach Salad
Aside from the pucker-power of the dressing, this chicken recipe from Mise en Place was just aboslutley delicious. It’s not often I feel like setting up a 3-step breading process, but this one was worth it. I’ve yet to see gluten-free panko anywhere yet, but even with the regular gf crumbs it’s damn tasty. I suppose I could crush some corn flakes if I wanted the different texture… Okay, I definitely have to try that next time!

Wednesday: Cheese-Stuffed BBQ Meatloaf + Green Beans + Sweet Potatoes
A freezer meal “classic” (if something can be a classic when we’ve only been doing freezer meals for a few months!), this is always a good Wednesday night supper because there’s seldom a reason to hurry dinner to the table since payroll almost always keeps Todd until 8pm at the office. The nice thing about this particular meatloaf (aside from the layer of cheese in the center and the sweet bbq sauce on top, that is) is the chopped peppers inside–it changes things up just enough so that it doesn’t feel like boring meatloaf.

Maybe next time I’ll do a couple of the Cordon Blue-style meatloaves (with ham and cheese inside) that Todd’s a fan of, I bet they’d freeze just fine!

Thursday: Pepper Pesto Pork and Zoodles + Sweet Corn
I had plenty of the Red Pepper Pesto from Table for Two from the last time I used it and decided it would go as well with the zucchini noodles as anything else. It was a successful experiment, and I’ve put the super-simple recipe down below.

Friday: Impromptu night out at Sweet Grass Dairy
I forgot, when I was making this week’s menu, that Friday was the Rose Parade and all. While we briefly entertained the idea of walking back home, having supper, and then walking back downtown for the fireworks, we decided we were more likely to stay home rather than venture back out, so hung out downtown. I have a full recap of the Friday and Saturday Rose Festival coming in video form, just as soon as I get it edited (it’s almost 3 hours of footage!), but dinner at Sweet Grass Dairy did not disappoint!

Saturday: Tomato Sauce w/Italian Sausage + Polenta-Style Grits
It’s a good thing I remembered to put the Crock Pot on before we went out to Art & Bark in the Park because once we got home both Todd and I were beat and took some long naps! All I had to do once I convinced myself to leave the fluffy blankets was to make the grits. It might take 30 minutes to make good grits (don’t even bother with the quick stuff, it’s not worth it) but very little of that time is active cooking.

Sunday: Baked Thai Salmon Chicken + Green Peas + Rice Noodles
I’ve been a bit spacey lately (Todd allows that I have had a lot on my mind) and one of those space cadet moments was completely forgetting to put salmon on the shopping list. Even though it’s on the same piece of paper as my menu. Thankfully, the sweet chili sauce worked just as well on chicken thighs as it would have on salmon, and dinner was saved. (Yes, I could have gone to the store for the salmon, but it wasn’t a compelling reason to switch out of pajamas on an otherwise go-nowhere Sunday.)

A successful kitchen experiment deserves to be shared, so here is the basic run-down of the Pork and Zoodles meal, above.

Pepper Pesto Pork and Zoodles

Serves 4

6 medium zucchini, spiralized
2 T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
4 oz red pepper pesto
4 boneless pork loin chops
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in a large saute or frying pan, add zucchini strips and cook 5-10 minutes, until they start to cook down a bit. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in red pepper pesto to coat the zoodles, then push the zucchini and sauce to the edges of the pan and fill the center with the pork chops.

Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cover. Cook until the pork is done, 10-15 minutes depending on thickness.

Top with Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

And with that, I happily turn the dinner reins over to Todd for the week. Since it’s my birthday this Saturday, he’s making a lot of my favorites over the course of the week: grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, burgers fresh off the grill, and butter chicken as well. Yum!  And we’ve already decided that if there’s a night he doesn’t feel like cooking (hey, it happens), sushi will be the alternative.

What’s on your plate this week?

~Jenn

S’Waffled Toast and More!

Nibbles

Gooooooood morning! What’s so good about it? Um…. it’s here and we’re here to see it! (And that’s far better than the alternative!)

Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Counter Top, Episode 3)

I have no specific reason for being so chipper today, but I am, so I’m just going to roll with it. Join me?

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Looking back on the past week’s menu, I think it was one of my more enjoyable weeks, food-wise. There’s always room for improvement, but I feel like it was well-balanced (both in time spent preparing the food as well as the variety of dishes). Here’s how it broke down:

Monday: Chicken & Chickpea Chopped Salad
This recipe from Ambitious Kitchen was a good start to the week. Quick and easy to prepare and it tasted so good! The winning flavor combo was the goat cheese + barbecue sauce. It pretty much made the salad. I can see us making this again.

Tuesday: Night out with friends!
First Tuesday’s mean a meet-up and we were once again at Northside Pies. I was in the mood for appetizers but messed up my order and was “that girl” who orders one gluten-free item and one gluten-full one. D’oh! I meant to order the Caprese Salad to go with my cheese bread on a gluten-free base, but there was some sort of short circuit between my brain and my mouth and I ordered the Feta Bruschetta instead. Oh, well! The good thing about the whole Low-FODMAP thing is that the effects are cumulative, and by reducing the amount of wheat (and therefore fructans) by having the one gluten-free item I could indulge in the accidental order and enjoy it as long as I didn’t eat the whole thing myself. (I shared some, ate some, and took the rest home for later.) I neglected to get a picture, though–oops!

Wednesday: Braised Tilapia with Artichoke Hearts + Steamed Kale
This recipe came from an old Menu Mailer subscription (but is available in this post on Saving Dinner). It’s a good, simple, but not boring fish dinner recipe and the only real change I made was to sub green onions for yellow and my arrowroot slurry for the wheat flour she suggests to thicken the pan drippings into a sauce. Forgo the lumps and use a slurry, it’ll make meal prep so much simpler.

Thursday: Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew + Brown Rice
Ah, freezer meals, they make our lives so much easier. This one needs something, but I’m not 100% sure what just yet. The recipe is from Stock Piling Moms, though mine looks a lot more tomatoey than hers does. I think a can of coconut milk might have been a good addition instead of the cup of broth added just before crocking. Or maybe just a bit more seasonings overall as once it was combined with the rice it lost some of it oomph. Not bad, just needs a little tweaking.

Friday: S’Waffled Toast + Sausage
Todd was a little late getting home so I had time to ponder what I was going to do with the French toast for dinner. Not that French toast on its own is anything but delicious, but I felt like playing a bit. Waffled French toast is nothing new around the ‘net, and a quick search turns up stuffed versions, too, so this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering invention on my part. But I do like my name for it (stuffed and waffled French toast is a bit of a mouthfull, you know? pun intended). My version of this recipe is at the bottom of this post.

Saturday: Sushi Bowls + Spring Rolls
I could eat sushi almost any or every night of the week and be blissfully happy. My wallet might not agree, nor do I always have time to make it at home. But sushi bowls are another thing entirely. Sometimes I’ll use it as a side dish but often it can stand on its own with no problem–it just depends on what you add to it! This version had the usual sweet potato, green onions, avocado, and nori plus little green peas, carrots, and sliced fried egg. And if you want to make your own Yummy sauce (aka Yum Yum Sauce, aka Japanese Steakhouse White Sauce, etc.) here’s a recipe from AllRecipes.

Sunday: (Crock) Pot Roast + Carrots + Mashed Potatoes
Sometimes you just want a good, old-fashioned Sunday dinner and this was one of those times. My best pot roast is always one done in the slow-cooker, and this one was simply seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. I propped it up on a bed of whole carrots (peeled but otherwise intact) and only added the barest amount of water to the crock pot so I wouldn’t come home to stew. There was still plently of pan juices to turn into gravy, and because the carrots were cooking in it more than the roast it was almost like a carrot jus and made for a slightly sweet gravy.

S'Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

For the Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, mashed
2 Tbsp sugar

For the Toast:
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla (or more, to taste)
10 slices bread

Preheat your waffle iron to the crispy settling and spray it with non-stick spray. (Most irons advise against this but I always ignore that–this is a messy recipe and this will make it much easier to clean up later.)

Combine the filling ingredients and adjust the sweetness to taste. If you don’t have fresh or frozen berries, I’d bet that you could stir preserves into the cream cheese and omit the sugar and be just fine.

Mix together in a medium-sized bowl the eggs, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Spread the filling mixture generously on one side of a piece of bread and place a second slice on top. Depending on the size and configuration of your waffle iron and the shape of your bread, you may want to cut the sandwiches in half.

Dunk the sandwiched bread into the liquid, covering on all sides.

Place onto the waffle iron and close the lid securely. My waffle iron always needs two rounds of cooking to get anything done, these s’waffled toasts were no exception. Your mileage may vary depending on your waffle iron, use your best judgement.

Carefully remove the finished toasts from the waffle iron, serve with powdered sugar or syrup, as is the custom, and enjoy!

Have a tasty week!

 

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry + View From the Countertop #2 (video)

Nibbles

Once again I filmed this past week’s meal prep and, since I had a request after the last one, added narration to the video instead of music (maybe next time I’ll do both, depending on time).

(Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Countertop #2)

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

With the Luau the weekend before and so many delicious leftovers in the fridge, it’s probably no surprise that half of this week was made up from those.

Monday: Pulled Pork Sliders + Potato Salad
See the Luau post to get the links for the potato salad. I chopped up some of the leftover pork and mixed it with the tart bbq sauce from Fallin’s for our sliders. Easy and perfect for a Monday night supper.

Tuesday: Hawaiian Chicken Legs + Sweet Leilani Luau Salad
As I mention in the video, I’d planned to make chicken salad with the leftover legs, adding pineapple and macadamia nuts into my usual chicken salad recipe. But bad news at work had me seriously considering ice cream for supper, so I feel somewhat proud of myself for eating real food. (And let’s not kid ourselves, I had a good helping of ice cream afterwards.)

Wednesday: Beef Stir Fry + Brown Rice
Freezer meals to the rescue. Yes, we could have still been eating leftovers but I figured we needed a change of pace so pulled out one of the recent freezer meal additions. It’s a pretty simple kit: vegetables, beef, and sauce (a few tablespoons of sauce is added to the packet of beef as a marinade). I added half a head of cabbage we had in the crisper and it was a good thing I did. I’ll be adding that to the notes on my freezer meal spreadsheet–the meal would have been a little light without it!

Thursday: Luau Leftovers
They pick up our trash on Friday mornings so it was a good idea to eat, freeze, or toss anything left from the party at this point. Plus, the work news from Tuesday was/is the type to hang out all week, so a night with no cooking duties was appreciated.

Friday: Shrimp & Eggplant Curry with Cellophane Noodles
A kitchen experiment that totally worked, we enjoyed it so much that I’ve transcribed it from memory/video so you can try it, too. This is a Thai-style curry so it’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and totally delicious. The basic cubes are the little freezer cubes of chopped basil I’ve found at Trader Joe’s. They’re nice to keep on hand for recipes like this when you can’t always count on having fresh basil in the crisper. The lemongrass paste is another quick tip, found in the produce section by the fresh herbs, we also buy cilantro and ginger in paste form from time to time.

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry

serves 4

2 T olive oil
1 T garlic olive oil
1 large eggplant, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 package cellophane noodles plus water to cover
2 T Thai red curry paste
2 T grated ginger
1 T lemongrass paste
2 basil cubes (or 2 t dried basil)
1 can coconut milk
12 oz medium shrimp

Pour hot water over rice noodles in a bowl large enough to hold the bricks of noodles and an inch of water above. Let the noodles soak while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Heat olive oils in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat.

Add bell pepper and eggplant to pan and saute until peppers start to soften slightly and eggplant edges start to brown.

Stir in curry paste, ginger, lemongrass, and basil, then stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until vegetables are fully cooked.

Add shrimp, simmer and stir for about a minute, then turn off the burner and let the heat of the coconut milk mixture to finish cooking to shrimp (this helps prevent over cooking the seafood). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Drain the cellophane noodles (I find a pasta scoop works best for this, as the noodles are so small as to slip through most colanders with ease) and mix them into the shrimp and vegetables, stirring to distribute the sauce throughout.

Enjoy!

I think I’ve stumbled upon the perfect combination in eggplant and coconut milk. Usually you’d salt and press the eggplant to draw out any bitterness but, I admit, I was lazy this time and skipped that step. But the slight sweetness of the coconut milk seems to have counteracted any bitterness in the eggplant because it was the second best eggplant I’ve ever had and Todd really enjoyed it as well! (The best being this sweet eggplant dish that Bahn Thai sometimes has on their lunch buffet, it’s absolutely amazing; they leave the skin on and it’s still the best eggplant ever.)

Saturday: Corned Beef Hash + Eggs
Lazy Saturday, I slept in, it rained all day, Todd napped in the afternoon. Yeah, we did nothing much of importance and it was just fine, so a late supper of breakfast seemed like a good idea to both of us.

Sunday: Zuppa Toscana
It rained almost all of Easter Sunday as well, and since we’d all just gotten together for Todd’s birthday last weekend we’d decided to forgo a family Easter event. I grabbed the pouch of Zuppa Toscana from 12tomatoes was a good answer to an unplanned Sunday supper. Rainy weather is perfect soup weather and this one was pretty tasty. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Olive Garden I really can’t say whether it’s a convincing copycat recipe or not, but we definitely enjoyed it. Maybe next time I’ll actually plan ahead and make some fresh bread sticks to go with it.

And that work news I keep mentioning, it does deserve an explanation, but this isn’t the right post for it. I’ll try to organize my thoughts about it for the next one.

A Week of Meals + a Three Cheese Artichoke Dip Bonus!

Nibbles

Okay, folks, it’s February. The exhilaration of the new year has worn off a bit, now it’s time to stop thinking about meal and menu planning and actually do it. You with me?

Here’s some help!

On The Plate 1/25-1/31

On The Plate 1/25-1/31

Monday: Garlic-Parmesan Pork Chops with Brown Rice and Green Beans
I had a chance to try out some of those freezer meals I put away a few weeks back and this was one of them. I believe it was inspired by this recipe at Plain Chicken, but my version does NOT include cream of chicken soup or prepared garlic bread seasoning. Instead I used coconut milk for the cream soup plus the applicable seasoning, garlic oil, and Parmesan cheese along with a splash of apple cider vinegar. I don’t know how the original tasted, but ours was very good and, yes, the convenience of just throwing the prepared everything into a baking dish and setting up the rice cooker did make dinner that night even easier to prepare.

Tuesday: Chicken Thighs and Polenta with Italian Sausage and Tomato Gravy
In Italy they call it polenta, down here we just call them grits (they’re not the same, but they’re close cousins, and if you cook grits low and slow they don’t turn out gritty at all); they make a nice side dish option for a little something different. I added some garlic olive oil, Italian herbs, and chives to add color and flavor and used a little less liquid than I normally would for regular grits. The Italian Sausage and Tomato gravy is another one that I came across while hunting up freezer meals (found here, but I skipped the cream cheese), but I only had half the sausage it called for to top pasta, but it was enough to top the chicken and grits polenta. This one will likely happen again.

Wednesday: Cheese-Stuffed BBQ Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, and Spinach
Our first freezer meal meatloaf and I’m sold on it. And what goes better with meatloaf of any stripe than mashed potatoes? Total comfort food meal along with the spinach. I’m glad I made two of these meatloaves (from The Virtuous Wife) when I was prepping the freezer meals because we get to have this again with very little effort.

Thursday: Overnight Creamy Chicken Mac & Cheese with Glazed Carrots
I found this recipe from Flavor the Moments while browsing Pinterest and it sounded novel enough to give it a whirl. It made for a perfectly fine supper but, if you already have a favorite from-scratch mac and cheese, you don’t necessarily need to click the link. The gimmick, here, is that you make your white sauce and mix it and the dry pasta together and let sit overnight, “cooking” the pasta in the process. Unlike the overnight oats trend, this doesn’t seem to save time or dishes since you still have to mix everything together and bake it for an hour. I could just as easily boiled the pasta while making the sauce and, then, the finished casserole probably would have only needed half the time in the oven. Like I said, it was fine, but I’ll stick to my own recipe if I want any sort of mac & cheese in the future.

Mayuri Indian Restaurant, Tallahassee, FL

Mayuri Indian Restaurant, Tallahassee, FL

Friday: Mayuri Indian Restaurant
Sadly, some friends are moving to Reno in a few weeks, and we all met up at a local Indian restaurant to wish them off. I ordered the Kal Dosa (rice pancakes) with Chicken Curry and Todd chose the Goat Vindaloo and Garlic Naan. I also had a cup of their chai and it was very tasty–not the sweeter version that I drink frequently at home, but very good nonetheless.

Saturday: Quinoa Bowls with Turmeric-Tahini Dressing
Again, browsing Pinterest brought up a post from Keepin It Kind about macro bowls. I may have been intrigued by the Turmeric-Tahini dressing most of all, since we have a jar of tahini that needs using up and I can only do some much hummus. My eventual bowl (quinoa, chick peas, kale, sweet potatoes, red cabbage, nori, avocado, and cucumbers) might not technically count as a macro bowl (no fermented veggies–Todd’s not a fan), but it was very filling and made for a good meatless meal. At least I thought so. Todd wasn’t as impressed with it. Oh, well, you win some you lose some.

Sunday: Beef Stew and Rice
Another freezer meal, but you don’t need a recipe for this one. Just throw everything you usually put into your stew into a freezer bag for later. Toss it in a slow cooker with a cup of red wine or beer and 2 cups of water and let it cook all day until everything’s nice and tender. Serve over rice

A secondary lesson from our freezer meal adventure is that Ziploc freezer bags are not what they used to be! It’s gotten to the point that I’ve designated a particular bowl to be the defrost bowl, and anything with the remote possibility of leaking needs to be in it when defrosting in the fridge to reduce spills and cross-contamination. They’ve always been the gold standard for freezer bags but the boxes we picked up from Sams are consistently leaking upon defrost. It’s quite unfortunate and more than a little frustrating.

On a happier note, I had reason (reason, craving, take your pick) to whip up some artichoke dip for a snacking lunch on Sunday. Artichoke dip is, at heart, a simple recipe and I saw one recently from Positively Stacey that used green chilies in the mix. Of course, I was out of green chilies and we were nearly out of Parmesan cheese (the horror), but that’s not a reason to give up, just an opportunity to improvise.

So I present to you, my Three-Cheese Artichoke Dip, just in time for weekend noshing (or a certain football event that I hear is coming up).

IMG_20160131_135531280

Three Cheese Artichoke Dip

1 can (14 oz) Artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 Tbsp Recaito
1 Tbsp Garlic Olive Oil
pinch each of salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350° F.

Mix all ingredients together and place into a small casserole dish. Bake 30 minutes or until the edges are all golden bubbly.

Serve with tortillas, pitas, or crackers.

Recaito is a cilantro and bell pepper blend that Todd keeps on hand for when he cooks out of his favorite Puerto Rican cookbook. It doens’t have the heat of diced green chilies, but it does have a lot of flavor. We grazed on this Sunday afternoon in place of lunch while we worked more on the bathroom and other household chores.

Have a tasty week, my friends! Anyone have any good dinner plans for next week’s Chinese New Year?

MxMo CII: Spooky Sips | The Black Julep

Sips

You know what we haven’t had a lot of around here, lately? Cocktails! And while I had something else in mind for today’s post, I was happily reminded that today is Mixology Monday and I have the perfect cocktail inspiration. So today we’re joining up with other mixologists around the web and our host for this round, Rated R Cocktails, to bring you my version of the Black Julep cocktail.

Black Julep

At Northside Pies a couple weeks ago I ordered a Black Julep from their cocktail menu and was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. I’m not usually a big bourbon fan, though I’ve acquired a taste for the smoother ones over the years. One of my favorites is Tennessee Honey by Jack Daniels–I don’t generally sip spirits neat, but this one I will. The other component of a Black Julep is blackberry something–that’s where my memory got a little fuzzy (but I swear I only had one!).

For my version of the Black Julep I decided to make a syrup from blackberry wine in addition to muddling some blackberries in the bottom of the glass, like you’d do with mint in a normal julep. A semi-local winery in Defuniak Springs, Florida, Chautauqua Winery, makes a fabulous blackberry wine that we’ve been known to plan a weekend road trip around just to restock. It’s that good. If you don’t have a local favorite, Arbor Mist’s Blackberry Merlot would probably do in a pinch.

The blackberry syrup is 2 parts wine and 1 part sugar, boiled until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Now, when I say coats the back of a spoon, I mean you can run the back of your fingernail through it (or the tip of a knife, if you have short nails and don’t want to burn yourself) and the furrow doesn’t immediately fill. Let cool a bit, just so it won’t immediately melt the glass of ice. You can, of course, make this ahead of time and store it.

Black Julep

Fresh Blackberries
Sugar
Ice
2 oz Tennessee Honey Whiskey
Club Soda
Blackberry Syrup

Muddle 2-3 blackberries in the bottom of a rocks or low-ball glass with a dash of sugar. Fill the glass with ice and pour in the Tennessee Honey. Top with club soda until almost full and swirl the glass to combine things a bit. Pour some of the blackberry syrup over the back of a spoon into the drink. Garnish with another blackberry on a cocktail pick and enjoy.

While I think the color of the drink is a little on the macabre side, the theme of this month’s MxMo is Spooky Sips. Frankly, the scariest thing about this cocktail is how sweet it is. That was my intention, of course.

mxmo-halloween

If you’d like more spooky cocktail inspiration, head over to the host’s blog and check out the comments for more of this month’s participants.