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It’s officially fall…

I am on the road.  Insanely on the road.  Next week I actually get to be in the office for the whole week, but other than that I’m spending most of my time out of town until Thanksgiving.  Fun and new places, but exhausting!

Even though I have a bit more time while I’m on the road to write, the preparation for the travel has made blog food scarce.  We’ve been relying on a lot of old standby meals, leftovers from the freezer, and way too much restaurant food.  We’ve also done some crazy travelling as we’ve moved from summer into fall….including our trip to North Carolina, during which Santana stayed at PetSmart.  The very next weekend we zoomed down to Berkeley for a wedding, which Santana can also fill you in on.  Both were a bit quick and chaotic, but really fun and relaxing.  I loved being able to have a couple trips with Matt to just relax and enjoy our time together without work craziness getting in the way.

In better food news, since fall has definitely set in, it is crock pot weather for sure!  We actually used the Crockpot a decent amount during the summer, but fall means lots of soups, stews and chili…plus lots of leftovers to restock our freezer!

We said goodbye to the summer with a light meal that lasted us through two dinners and 1 lunch for me.  Tomato bacon quiche (which we had frozen from a couple months ago) with a spinach honey mustard salad and some lightly salted Kettle chips.  We were both huge huge fans of this meal, which is why it was repeated twice…usually we make some changes, switch up the side dishes, etc.  This time the same meal found its way to our plates two nights in a row.  So delicious and satisfying.  And a nice light end to the summer.  Bonus: homemade garlic croutons!

 

To welcome in the fall, we made a vegetarian chili cornbread casserole that completely outdid itself as a shared dish at a potluck, dinner for us at home, and is lasting Matt through this week while I’m out of town.  To make the chili, I mixed 4 or 5 cans of black and pinto beans (1 can of beans got mashed up) in the Crockpot with sautéed onion, green bell pepper and garlic.  I also added some spices, hot sauce and a can of green chilies.  Two cans of diced tomatoes rounded out the liquid in the pot and it cooked all day on high, bubbling away. 

I poured the cooked chili into two casserole dishes and topped each one with the batter for this cornbread with the addition of some shredded cheese to the mix.  They baked for about 40 minutes or so and then one went to the potluck, while the other chilled in the fridge, waiting for us the next day.

For our leftovers, we covered the 2nd casserole and popped it back in the oven to reheat.  While that was cooking a tossed some fresh broccoli with a tiny bit of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Into the oven it went to roast away.  It got crazy crispy and had a tiny zing from the balsamic.  Really wonderful.

The other star of the potluck and our leftovers was a fruit cobbler with fresh plums, pluots and nectarines, frozen blackberries, and a whole wheat cobbler crust.  Served with vanilla ice cream, obviously. 🙂

 

Meanwhile, Santana’s meals have remained pretty steady.  Because of her allergies and anxiety, she gets Benadryl and Pepcid before dinner.  Since she is so fussy, she gets the wonderful treat of having her meds wrapped in peanut butter (freshly ground peanuts from Whole Foods….Matt and I don’t even get this fancy for ourselves!). She follows this up with some dry food which must be amazing because she gobbles it down like a fiend.  What a gourmand.

 

Back to Basics

I’m currently blogging from the lovely Red Roof Inn just outside of Charlotte’s airport.  We spent the long weekend in NC with my aunt, grandma, brother and his girlfriend.  Extremely relaxing and just what I needed.  We did absolutely nothing…sat around, watched tv, made fun of each other, and ate lots of grandma’s delicious food.  Love it.  We’ve been spending lots of time watching the US Open….Matt is a huge tennis fan, and I am catching on. 🙂

Santana spent the weekend at the PetSmart PetsHotel….I felt like a mom dropping my kid off at school for the first time.  It was rough.  I called to check on her once this weekend, and the guy I talked to said she has been having a great time, playing with other dogs, and really enjoying the extra vanilla ice cream treat we paid for.  I can’t wait to see her!

Anyway, before we left, there wasn’t much to blog about food-wise, since we spent the week using up the stuff in our fridge.  Not only did we pull out some of the leftover frozen chili (mostly so that I could make cornbread and make another strata!), we also used a bunch of our fruits and veggies from the CSA in really easy, hearty and satisfying dishes that just got tossed in the oven to bake.  It was nice having things that were so quick and simple.  I love being able to just add a little oil and seasoning (or sugar and cinnamon in the case of fruit), throw the pan in the oven and have a tasty dish that brings out the best qualities of the produce.

Here are a couple pictures of our roast vegetables (pre-roasting and finished product).  We always love these, and I think in the winter we’ll do it a lot more.  It’s hard to justify heating up the apartment with the oven mid-summer.  This batch had freshly dug red potatoes, beautiful striped beets (they lost their stripes while they roasted!), local carrots and a couple green bell peppers.   Tossed with some olive oil, smashed garlic, salt and pepper.  We served it with some butter lettuce dressed with a bit of parmesan herb dressing.  We had some salmon burgers from the store we planned to add on top, but they were not tasty at all, so we just omitted.  It was still delicious and I had the leftover veggies the next day for lunch!

I love the way the veggies get crisp along the edges and all of their sweetness comes pouring out with a little bit of coaxing.  

The second was a fruit crisp.  We got a ton of blueberries in our box (and had some leftover from when Matt’s mom and aunt were in town), so we grabbed some raspberries and peaches from the store.  Tossed with a little sugar, cornstarch, and a couple other things. The mix filled a huge baking dish.

These colors are amazing together.  I didn’t manage to get a picture of the finished crisp…we were too hungry…but it got topped with a streusel-type topping and baked away.  Gooey and warm and perfect for topping some vanilla ice cream.  My coworkers got the leftovers of this one.

A week of delicious reminders that sometimes it just takes a tiny bit of prep to create some wonderful flavors from produce. 

We get home tomorrow afternoon and then head out Thursday morning for a long drive down to Berkeley for a wedding.  Another week with very little cooking.  We’ll see what comes the following week and then I’m on the road for the last week of September and most of October/November as well.  Maybe Matt will have to guest post with all the fun things he is eating while I’m travelling for work. 🙂

Yabba Dabba Doo Time

In scary news, I didn’t post a blog this weekend because we were busy and I was stressed, partly because we woke up Sunday morning to Santana’s bloody vomit all over the living room.  I was a complete wreck….called in sick to work today to take her to the vet.  Thankfully, the vet thinks it is not a huge deal since she has eaten fine and acted normal since then.  She’s now on Pepcid AC with her dinner.  What a fussy pup.

 

Several weekends ago, we were working on cleaning out the freezer (an endless task).  I looked over and Matt had pulled out a Flintstones-sized piece of beef.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  It was huge…I wish I had a picture of Matt holding this meat that was twice the size of his head.  It would definitely tip our car over!

I vaguely remember when we bought this.  I like to have meat handy in the freezer and can’t wait until I have lots of space and an extra freezer…I’ll be able to invest in half a cow and actually have the space to keep it in my house!  For now, I keep my eye out for great sales on bulk amounts of things like meat.  I think when I bought this particular package I couldn’t tell just how huge the pieces of meat were.  We made a roast out of one (I think) and then threw the other in the freezer for crock pot fun at some later point.

I knew that later point was finally  here when Matt pulled the hilariously large meat out of the freezer. 

I love…love…LOVE chili.  My dad has always made chili by starting with a basic seasoning mix, adding meat, about 40 different kinds of beans….and pretty much anything else he could find in the cupboard.  Sometimes we had potatoes in our chili, sometimes corn, sometimes kielbasa….it was always a crapshoot.  But usually really yummy.  My favorite was when a little bit of sweetness would find its way into the pot of chili somehow.  YUM! 

I’ve made chili myself several times…it’s a great way to use up beans, meat, spices, and sometimes I even throw corn in there with it.   This time I tried a new recipe for Chili Con Carne from Cooking Light.  Because of our schedule, I actually made the original batch overnight two days before the day we planned to eat.  This actually worked out really well because I tasted it in the morning and then adjusted, added an extra can of beans and made it perfect for us.

The meat wasn’t amazing…a little bit tough just because of the cut of it, but overall, it had a really wonderful spicy flavor.  With some shredded cheese and sour cream, and a side of cornbread, this was a great meal. Plus we have lots of leftovers in the freezer now! 

Of course, I can’t find the recipe I used, since I made this in the beginning of JULY (am I seriously that far behind!?).  It has been a whirlwind summer….It was a chili con carne recipe from Cooking Light, but I have scrounged the kitchen, my internet archives, everything, and it hasn’t turned up.  It had lots of meat, tomato-y goodness, and black beans galore.  Delicious.  Even if I tried to make it again from the same recipe, it would turn out completely different.

   

Honey-Topped Cornbread

I like my cornbread with pieces of corn mixed right in.  I adapted this recipe by using whole wheat flour, which gave it a nutty-ish flavor and a heartier bite.  I added 1 can of drained corn right before pouring it into the pan and then after it baked, brushed it with some honey.  This was pretty wonderful with the chili, but even better as leftovers.   Matt and I ate a couple pieces split, toasted and topped with creamy butter.  A really satisfying snack.

The rest of the cornbread got cut up and mixed with eggs, milk, breakfast sausage, cheddar and scallions to make an amazing cornbread strata that everyone in the apartment (aka. Matt) and everyone at work loved!  The cornbread made a great base and soaked up the egg and milk mixture wonderfully in the fridge overnight.   

So this recipe was quite a while ago, and proofreading it now and seeing the pictures again makes me want chili and leftover cornbread! Maybe we’ll heat some up from the freezer this week!

 

Vacation!

So I have been fairly delinquent with posting lately.  Aside from the recipe for the Lettuce wraps and eggrolls that I just posted (which I actually wrote last week, but for some reason never actually put up?), it has been busy and relaxed all at the same time, and it has left me with very little push to blog.  We just got back from a mini-vacation to Packwood (just south of Mt. Rainier National Park), and I thought I’d share some pictures!  We had a great time just relaxing with Santana, goofing off and enjoying the gorgeous weather and scenery.  You’ll notice that just like when we’re at home, laughing at Santana is one of our favorite things and we spend a good amount of time just taking pictures of her being hilarious. 

As we packed up, we managed to take more stuff than we would have needed for three weeks away.  It filled up our entire trunk!  Santana helped, of course and then got impatient in the car, waiting for us to join her….

It was a long long drive, and Santana was exhausted when we got there.  In fact, she slurped down an entire bowl of water in about 60 seconds….and then threw it all up on the floor.  Great start to the weekend!  Here are some pictures of Santana (and Matt!) checking out the giant king-size bed in our room.

  

We got ready to go swimming and I took advantage of this time to snap a picture of Matt’s short hair….I cut it  myself!  We decided $25 spent on a hair trimming kit for guys would quickly make us glad he wasn’t spending 10-15 dollars every time he wants his hair cut.

   

Dinner on our first night (well….and our second) was a complete splurge.  We were on vacation!  Just up the street in the tiny town of Packwood there was one pizza place.   Since we’ve been out here together, there are only 2 or 3 pizza places we’ve ever visited more than once.  We usually try a new place every time!  Nothing beats NY pizza, but we’ve found a couple that come close.  This one had OK crust and sauce, but the cheese was SO stringy and delicious!  We also go breadsticks, which was a great choice since they were AMAZING!  Despite our best vacation efforts, we didn’t finish all of this food in one sitting.

We agreed to NO TV for the trip, even though there was one in the room.  We also didn’t bring our laptops despite free Wi-Fi at the lodge.  This meant lots of reading, talking and cards!  Matt reminded me how to play Rummy 500 and Santana watched while we played!

   

For breakfast the next day I made red potato mini hash browns with onion and random seasonings.  Plus a red scallion and tomato scramble.  We split a banana and I had a Sobe Lifewater (I am addicted to these) and Matt made some black black black coffee.  Yum!! (Sunday I turned similar ingredients into a breakfast sloppy joe of sorts, with some ground beef we had planned to use for burgers and some cheese we had brought along.  It was…interesting.)

We planned a hike to Sand Lake for Saturday morning. It was supposed to be ridiculously hot and we thought it would be a nice swim at the end of the hike.  Little did we know, we picked the trail where all of the mosquitoes in Washington live.  I think I’ve found up to 40 bug bites on my arms and legs since coming home.  We made it about halfway through the hike (covered in bug spray) and then decided we’d rather just relax.  We got Santana some water at the trailhead and then headed back to the lodge, stopping at a scenic viewpoint on the way.  Since dogs are not allowed in Rainier National Park, we stayed just south of there.  But you can see the mountain peeking out all over the place.  Gorgeous!

 

We were all a bit squinty facing the sun, but I remembered my sunglasses!

We also got a couple with all three of us, but Santana couldn’t keep her eyes off the mountain!  

After our dusty, muddy, buggy hike, Santana got a mini-bath and wasn’t very happy about it.

 

She did, however, find my sunglasses on the bed at some point, and we decided they would be cute on her.  It’s clear that we had too much time on our hands!

 

The pup was beat, and so were we.  We crashed pretty early on Saturday night, slept in on Sunday and drove home with a couple mini stops along the way.  Sunday was a really lazy day of running a couple errands before the workweek started back up and we were in bed early early early. 

Hopefully I’ll be back to regular posting over the next couple weeks…and then we have some really fun summer visitors here for most of August, so I’ll probably be missing for a while again!  I hope everyone is having a great summer!  We miss vacation!!

Recipes From Home

Things have been ridiculously busy, and I’m about to head to KY for a long weekend to celebrate a friend’s wedding…plus we have been reheating leftovers from the freezer and having boring meals lately, so there hasn’t been much to post.  Plus, Santana has been exhausting me lately….she’s fussy about her food all of the sudden, sometimes doesn’t eat her breakfast, and last night I had to sleep on the couch with her to keep her from howling all night.  Not so good.  Hop on over to her blog to read about our hike last weekend.

My mom, however, has been on a roll cooking up some of my favorites (and some new things).  She sent me massive info about all this stuff, and I’ve decided you’re lucky enough to get a peek at her cheesecake.  It’s way down at the bottom of this post and it is my absolute most favorite cheesecake ever.  Especially when she uses the mini chocolate chips.  I can’t wait to go home (hopefully in September!) so I can get some of mom’s cheesecake 🙂

These are recipes that are simple, easy and satisfying.  My dad usually eats them several times in a row for lunch, and lots of times they’ll have leftovers for dinner throughout the week.  I love my mom’s recipes because a) she’s hilarious and b) it’s a refreshing change from the fancy blog recipes you sometimes see.  Plus, the ingredients are straightforward, easy to find and not intimidating…my mom was NOT excited about trying edamame or tofu at any point.  🙂

Mom & Dad’s Chicken Dinner

POTATO SALAD

Cook cut up potatoes until done. Cool. Add the following:

• Cut up hard boiled eggs (I use lots)
• diced dill pickles
• chopped green olives (unless you are serving Matt)
• diced carrots or/and celery if you want

Season with seasoned salt and pepper. Add a few tablespoons of the pickle juice and yellow mustard. Toss with miracle whip and chill. Turns out different all the time but after a while you get a feel for the mix and consistency you like.

3 BEAN SALAD

I had a recipe to try with fresh beans but in Unadilla, there were no fresh beans at our HUGE store. So I can across this one in a cookbook I had before I got married –  New and Revised Betty Crocker 1978 !!

• 1 can (16 oz) green beans, drained
• 1 can (16 oz) wax beans, drained
• 1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, drained
• ¼ cup chopped onions (calls for green)
• ¼ cup snipped parsley ( I used 1/8 cup dried)
• 1 cup Italian dressing
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed (once again from my limited pantry – I used 1 teaspoon minced from refrigerator)

Mix beans, onions and parsley in large bowl. Mix dressing, sugar and garlic. Pour over salad and toss.  Cover and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, at least 3 hours.  The recipe says to serve in lettuce-lined bowls…. Of course, I didn’t..

TEXAS-STYLE FRYER CHICKEN

  From Taste of Home Chicken Cookbook

• 1 Tablespoon seasoned salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 broiler/fry chicken (3-3.5 pounds)
• 2 garlic cloves, minced (or in my case 1 teaspoon minced from jar)
• ½ cup butter
• ½ cup chicken broth
• ½ cup lemon juice

Combine seasoned salt and pepper; rub inside and outside of chicken. Place chicken on rotisserie rod on grill (we subbed by putting on a rack in a disposal pan). In a small saucepan, sauté garlic in butter until tender.  Stir in broth and lemon juice. Pour into drip pan and place under chicken. Baste with sauce every 15 minutes for 1 to 1-1/2 hours or until juices run clear. Dad made this so I don’t even know how much of this he followed!!

Boiled Dinner

(I will pick the ham and potatoes out of this, but always hated the way the cooking cabbage made the house smell! -Mallory)

 

Add to large crock pot:

• 3.5 lbs ham (I used half of a bone in one)  Froze the rest for another meal.
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Onion
• can of broth

Remember to leave enough room for cabbage later..Cook on high 3 hours. Add cabbage wedges. Cook 2 more hours..

That’s it.  I didn’t add salt as ham can be salty.  I drizzle vinegar over mine.

Mom’s Cheesecake

(I generally love cheesecake, but this is my FAVORITE, especially when it has the chocolate chips-Mallory)

• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 3 tablespoons margarine, melted

Combine crumbs, sugar and margarine; press onto bottom of 9 inch springform pan. I bake in the oven when preheating but only for a few minutes. Make sure it is cooled off before adding cake mixture.

• 3 8-oz pkgs of cream cheese (softened) -  I bring to room temp and then microwave at 50% for 1.5 minutes. You can use one “Lite” cream cheese but don’t use 3 – really changes the consistency
• ¾ cup of sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate pieces
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine cream cheese and sugar, mixing at medium speed on electric mixer until well blended.  (This is when the mix flies all over if the cream cheese isn’t softened enough). Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Blend in chocolate pieces and vanilla; pour over crust. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 250 (leave oven door open a crack until temp. reaches 250. Continue baking 35 minutes. Loosen cake from rim of pan. Cool before removing rim of pan.

Chill.

 

Next week I should have more recipes to post…but for now I’m headed to KY and dreaming of cheesecake from home in NY 🙂 Miss you mom!!!