Imagine teamed up with CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration to solve their June 1st Case File. I used to participate with CSI as a digiscrapper, but it’s been a few years since I was last on that site. And now, as part of the Imagine team, I needed to drag out my old school supplies to go back to basics for a traditional scrapbook layout!
Case #231 is super hero-themed, and it just so happens that the 2017 Rose Parade was also super hero-themed, and we had Duncan with us, so I had perfect pictures for this assignment.
The fun twist to the CSI challenges is that it’s more than merely a sketch and/or color scheme (though that’s part of it). To solve the case you have to use at least three pieces of “evidence” (that would be elements or supplies) and give appropriate “testimony” (aka journaling, and they give you prompts to choose from).
As per my usual these days, I ran video for this layout (considering how long it’s been since I’ve done a physical scrapbook page, this is right up there with historical documents!). Take a gander to see how I planned out the page and put the various pieces together.
The supplies in my CSI kit were:
Imagine Supplies:
First, I really want to share about the journal I made for this year’s art journal project, and now that it’s been shared over on the Imagine blog, I can!
It’s a fairly simple and straightforward Coptic-stitch book with chipboard covers that I decorated with torn craft paper and an old map page. The full supply list is available on the Imagine blog (Creative Journals for Creative People). Of course, I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t mention that the supplies and directions for a similar book can be found in the Bound & Determined kit from The Crafty Branch.
While I’d love to be able to make time during the week to work on it, I’m realistic enough to know that it’s most likely going to be on weekends, so the first weekend’s page was completed on Sunday, the 8th:
And, even better, I filmed the making of this page and have the edited, voice-overed, and much sped up (it went from an hour of real time to less than 10 minutes in the video) version over on my YouTube channel right now!
Todd helped me set up a new filming rig before I started this page. It still needs some tweaks but I think, overall, it’s going to make the videos look a lot better and make it much easier for me to film process videos of all sorts of projects. If anyone’s curious, let me know and I’ll be happy to post about how we cobbled together an overhead rig for far less than anything that I could find pre-made and that didn’t involve a lot of heavy lifting in the tool department.
Between the changes at work and our new family of three, last week was one of those that I could have easily bailed on cooking any given night and not felt very guilty at all. The fact that I only skipped one planned meal in favor of take-out is a small victory.
Monday: Sweet Potato Cake Turkey Burgers + Side Salad + Grapes
Super simple freezer meal number one–this one didn’t even need defrosting! I believe the patty recipe came from Multiply Delicious and I just subbed turkey for chicken as the former is way easier to find and frequently on sale. I also doubled the recipe to make 12 patties or 3 meals at a time. We’ll definitely be making another batch because they are just so simple to have on hand and very tasty.
Tuesday: Chicken Curry with Cabbage and Peppers + Basmati Rice
Never a bad time for a good curry, this was our first try of the recipe from Loving My Nest and I think it’s a keeper. A freezer meal, yes, but I didn’t bother with the crock pot and it was the right call–the chicken may have become mealy if it cooked all day. Now, I believe I added a can of coconut milk to the mix before I froze it and, yes, it “broke” a bit (separated) when I cooked it. Would I do it again? Maybe, maybe not. I was just trying to avoid planning this meal and forgetting to have a can of coconut milk on hand and while it affected the appearance slightly, the taste didn’t suffer one bit. And, yes, I’d definitely use coconut milk over cows milk for this curry and pretty much any curry.
Wednesday: Cod Creole + Parmesan Orzo + Green Beans
What is it with me and forgetting to actually buy the fish I put on the menu?! I stuck it out this time, though, and it was definitely worth it. Cod is not only a very milk white fish it also doesn’t tend to fish-up the house when cooked. And this preparation from Hello Spoonful is just so simple it’s hard to beat! The one brand of gluten-free orzo we can find is a love-hate thing for us. We love orzo and have many dishes that call for it, but the gluten-free version puts out so much starch while boiling that it really does resemble risotto by the end more so than plain pasta. Straining it is a joke, so I usually don’t even bother, just mixing it into whatever else I had in mind and going with the flow.
Thursday: Broiled Steak + Mexican Street Corn Salad
Mmmm, Cinco de Mayo–as if we needed an excuse to have Mexican food for dinner, but I’m happy to take it anyway. The meal was mostly about the salad, which I found over on Live Eat Learn. I could have eaten a large bowl of this salad and skipped the steak and not been deprived whatsoever–I can totally see us making it again. We did a few substitutions, though. Normally I’d swap hominy for beans in most recipes, but since we were already focusing on the corn, I opted for some zucchini and yellow squash that needed to be used from the crisper. Also, while I adore feta and cotija cheese, we had a sizeable block of white cheddar leftover from my party and I shredded that up into the salad instead. I also cooked most of the ingredients for a bit to soften the squash and peppers up. I’m sure there are endless variations one could make on this salad and not go wrong–some halved cherry tomatoes come to mind, and maybe some avocado chunks, too?
Friday: Take out!
I debated making breakfast for dinner, but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead I picked up fried chicken and fixings and enjoyed the hell out of it!
Saturday: Sweet Potato Carbonara with Spinach and Eggplant
Since Todd isn’t a mushroom fan and they’re pretty High-FODMAP to boot, I substituted eggplant for the mushrooms in this recipe from Eating Well. Even though my sweet potato “noodles” didn’t hold their shape, this was a very filling, very tasty dish overall and I would encourage you to try it, even if yours ends up a bit more like a sweet potato vegetable hash like ours did.
Sunday: Shepherd’s Pie-Stuffed Potatoes + Jicama Citrus Salad
I’m sure you’ve seen those quick-cut videos of inventive food on Facebook, right? Have you actually tried any of them out? Well, I can now say that I have and it wasn’t that bad! While I did neglect to add additional liquid to make up for the thirstyness of the coconut flour I used, everything went more or less according to plan in this recipe/video from Tip Hero. I even dug out my large star pastry tip to pipe the potatoes onto the top! The salad though, that was a disappointment since my jicama ended up well past it’s use-by date (something a little hard to tell with the leathery outside to judge by). I will attempt the salad again, though, as I really do love jicama in cold salads.
Booze tip:I totally took a short cut on the citrus salad and bought the large container of pre-sliced fruit in extra-light syrup. If you are a fan of  greyhounds (the drink, not the dog, though they are lovely dogs), save said syrup and mix with your favorite gin for an slightly sweeter version of this simple libation. Fabulous, refreshing, and super-quick.
And that’s another week’s menu! I hope you got some good ideas from what was on our plates this week and have an excellent week in your own kitchen! Remember, it doesn’t have to be “gourmet” to be good, or even great. Make what you like, mix things up a bit, get some variety in there, and enjoy your meals!
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).
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.
This was a big week, food-wise! Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras, and Valentine’s Day all within 7 days… Let’s dig in!
Monday: Lunar New Year Feast!
In honor of the Year of the Monkey I decided it was a good time to look into Lunar New Year dinner customs and found a good resource at ChinaHighlights.com. Along with another site I failed to bookmark (oops!) I devised a 6-dish menu that, I think, hit the high points of the celebratory dinner. Everything about the Lunar New Year is about prosperity, so the food tends to either resemble symbols of wealth (like spring rolls resembling ingots) or have homophonic names (a lot easier in a culture whose language depends tremendously on inflection for meaning).
I steamed almost-whole catfish (head-on would be traditional, but I didn’t miss it–have you looked at a catfish face lately?) with a broth of chicken stock, soy sauce, fish sauce, and ginger. Then I used the same broth to cook and flavor our “Longevity noodles” with cabbage. The noodles were the small rice noodles sometimes known as cellophane noodles, the important thing is that they are long (see the play on words) and these definitely qualified. It was nice to see that leafy greens are synonymous with money and good fortune across cultures, too.
I purchased dumplings and spring rolls to reheat, as well as tangerines to serve as is. Then I made the sticky rice cakes from a Chow Hound recipe. They’re less like a cake, more like a cooked pudding, and reminded me of cream of wheat meets rice pudding. All these dishes, plus the baking for the next day, made for a late supper and a messy kitchen, but it turned out to be totally worth it. And we learned about cultural traditions in the process!
King Cake 2016!
Tuesday: Sushi & King Cake with Friends
A friend of ours organized a dinner meetup at our favorite sushi place and of course we said yes, even if it was Fat Tuesday. Since we were meeting friends after work, I made an extra King Cake to bring with us. This year’s experiment used the brioche recipe from Gluten Free Baking Classics (by Annalise Roberts of My Gluten-Free Table)Â with the Bananas Foster filling recipe from Tasting Table. Not only was the brioche amazing on its own, the banana filling was a nice change from the cinnamon sugar we usually default to. Granted, I opted out of the cream cheese and just subbed a 4th banana for it, and I used frozen bananas from our banana bread-to-be stash instead of fresh. They cook down faster.
Wednesday: Maple-Mustard Pork Chops with Roasted Green Beans and Red Potatoes
I was so glad I had this one in the freezer to pull out for a relatively quick meal. When I got home I chopped up the potatoes and tossed them with olive oil and seasonings along with a bag of frozen green beans. In the oven they went, occupying half a cookie sheet lined with foil and pinched in the center to create a barrier. After half an hour the pork chops went onto the open half and back into the oven. Made for some easy clean-up to sort of make up for the mess from Monday.
Thursday: Coconut Curry Chicken with Basmati Rice and Not-Exactly-Naan
Another freezer meal, this one for the slow cooker. The house smelled divine when we got home, but I found the sauce to be a bit thin, so added more salt, garam masala, and an arrowroot slurry to pull it all together. Much better. I’ve been working on my gluten-free “naan” for a while and this one, while still not quite perfect, was a big hit with Todd. It was 3:2 GF Bisquik and Self-Rising cornmeal, an egg, a can of coconut milk, and seasonings (salt, cilantro, chives, and garlic oil), mixed and griddled.
Friday: Bacon Pancakes and Eggs
We’ve all seen these online, right? I hadn’t tried it and figured it would be a fun Friday-night supper. I tried laying the cooked bacon on the griddle and pouring the batter over it and the other way around. Pouring the pancakes first yielded prettier pancakes by far. Once again, Pamela’s pancake mix rocks!
Saturday: Spaghetti and Meat Sauce with a Green Salad
I knew we’d be working on the bathroom so I wanted something relatively simple and high on the comfort food meter for Saturday’s supper. Now, I’ve written about how a spaghetti dinner isn’t exactly cheap when you’re on a restricted diet, this time I avoided one of the major expenses (specialty marinara sauce) and threw together my own. Not something I always feel like fussing with on a weeknight, but on a weekend I will.
Sunday: Lemon Dump Chicken, Brown Rice, and Caramel Apple Tarts
Such an ignoble name for a tasty slow-cooker supper, we really enjoyed this freezer meal and I have no idea where I copied the recipe down from. Basically it’s chicken breasts, a couple of lemons (halved, but otherwise intact), carrots, Brussels sprouts, and seasonings. I hadn’t planned on a starch, but there was so much juice in the slow cooker that I decided some brown rice would not go amiss. The Caramel Apple Tarts were part of the Omaha Steaks gift package Todd’s mom sent us for Christmas. Very High-FODMAP between the wheat and apples (and we added vanilla ice cream), but just the right size for a splurge. I regret nothing. And in honor of Valentine’s Day I broke out grandma’s china and poured us a little wine, too.
When I was putting together our salads Saturday night, I remembered that I recorded a video back at the beginning of January about the neat little trick I use to get perfect radish slices. So I dug out the footage for you and here it is!
