• Home
• Me & Food
• Recipes
• Blogroll!

RSS

Archive for the ‘Yum’ Category

Baked Falafel!

To make up for our super-heavy comfort food dinner last night, we went a bit healthier after work on Monday! (We also followed it up with some Cherry Garcia ice cream…so it wasn’t completely healthy)

Falafel Pita Sandwiches

(adapted from this recipe)

What You Need

3/4  cup  water

1/4  cup  uncooked bulgur

3  cups  cooked chickpeas (garbanzo beans)

1/2  cup  chopped green onions

1/3  to 1/2 cup water

2  tablespoons  all-purpose flour

1  tablespoon  ground cumin

1  teaspoon  baking powder

3/4  teaspoon  salt

1/4  to 1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper

1 tablespoon dried parsley

3  garlic cloves

Cooking spray

Pitas

Tzatziki or Tahini sauces (I made a quick tzatziki with plain greek yogurt, a ton of diced cucumber, a splash of lemon juice, ground black pepper and a tiny bit of garlic powder)

Sandwich toppings (we used more cucumber, the gorgeous heirloom tomato pictured above, thin sliced onion and parmesan cheese)

What You Do

• Bring 3/4 cup water to a boil, add bulgur, remove from heat, cover and let sit for 30 minutes.  Drain.
• Blend chickpeas through garlic until mostly smooth. Stir in bulgar.
• Form into 1/4 inch patties (makes about 12) and place on baking sheet lined with cooking spray.  Give them a little space, as they’ll puff up just a bit.
• Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, flipping halfway through cooking time. 
• They’ll get nice and brown and crispy on each side. Yum!
• Fill pitas and enjoy! (sorry for some of the fuzzy pictures…I was too tired and hungry)

 

This was really easy to make.  I’ve done fried falafel from a mix before, which is even easier (and frying gives you the most amazing flavor, of course), but this was SO good and so much healthier than frying.  They were a little dry, so I might add a little more water to the mix next time.  I also think it would be good with some red pepper blended into the mix as well.  Matt and I are crazy about falafel, so i’m sure I’ll have some opportunities to udpate this recipe!

We were missing our loveable friend, bacon (which got two minor roles in yesterday’s meals)…

Sunday, Beginning and End

Sunday morning (late morning, anyway) started with a repeat of my open-faced bagel sandwiches, with shredded cheddar since we were out of slices.  This is ridiculously satisfying…I wish I had a picture of the wonderfully running yolk after you cut into the middle of the bagel! Next time I will get one!

I surprised Matt with a side for our bagel….cinnamon apples! YUM! I’ve never made these before, but I have a bunch of apples left in the fridge and felt like we needed some fruit to kick start our day.  Very very easy to make:

• Chop 2 apples into 16 pieces each (8 wedges, each cut in half)
• Toss in a small pan with about 1/2 cup of apple juice, 1 Tablespoon brown sugar, 1 teaspoon granulated sugar, and cinnamon to taste.
• Boil the hell out of them until they are soft and gooey.  If you like your apples more firm, decrease the apple juice, more soft, increase it!

 

yum yum yum yum yummmm!

We ran errands, splurged on some soft pretzels in the middle of the day, and then came home to make some delicious comfort food for dinner!

Sweet & Spicy Pepper Meatloaf

This recipe was adapted from Alton Brown’s Good Eats Meatloaf, and changed up based on what we had in the apartment.  When my mom makes meatloaf, there is a disgusting layer of grease that builds up around/on top of the meat that then gets drained off…it has always dissuaded me from making meatloaf.  When I came across this recipe, which avoids that problem for the most part, I was thrilled!

What you need:

• 3 oz crackers
• pepper
• cayenne
• chili powder
• dry thyme
• 1/2 an onion
• 1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
• 1.5 lbs ground beef
• salt
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• cumin
• Worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce
• honey

What you do:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Pulse cracker, pepper, cayenne, chili powder and dry thyme in a food processor until fine and add to beef.
• Pulse onion and red pepper in food processor to a fine chop and add to the bowl. This made a gorgeous orange/red mix!
• Combine the cracker mixture, onion mixture and ground beef with salt and egg until well mixed, but not overworked. 

• Press mixture into loaf pan(s).  We used a mini loaf pan and got three loaves out of it.  This is a great way to make loaves to freeze and reheat later!  You can also do it in one large pan.
• On a parchment-lined baking sheet, turn the molded loaves out and bake for 10 minutes.

• Combine ketchup, cumin, Worcestershire, hot sauce and honey.
• After 10 minutes, brush glaze on loaves and return to oven.

• Bake until internal temperature reaches 155 degrees.  For our mini-loaves this took about 20-30 more minutes. 
• Remove from oven and let rest for a couple minutes, then place on paper towel-lined plate to remove some of  the grease from the bottom.
• Slice and serve!

   

We served with Parmesan Red Mashers (baby red potatoes mashed with a bit of parmesan, a tiny bit of cream, a pat of butter, salt and pepper) and my Creamy Bacon Brussels Sprouts.  This is one of my absolutely most favorite veggie side dishes, and a stellar example of how bacon makes the world a better place.

We were in major food coma state after dinner, but we relaxed, watch a movie and were completely satisfied with our comfort food for the weekend!

White Chicken Chili

What you need:

• 6 chicken thighs
• spice mix of cayenne, paprika, cumin, ground coriander, dry oregano, kosher salt…adjust ratio based on your taste. I love love love cumin, so I was heavy on that one.
• 1 Tb. olive oil
• 1 large yellow onion, diced
• 1 Tb. minced garlic
• 3 cans white beans of your choice, drained (I used great northern beans and regular white beans)
• 1 7oz. can diced green chilies
• 1 tomato, diced
• Hot sauce, to taste
• Low sodium chicken broth
• Scallions, cheese, sour cream, crusty bread, and any other toppings you like on your chili

 

What you do:

• Rub chicken thighs with spice mix to cover, grill to cook, rest and chop.  I used our Foreman grill and this was SO easy…I love that thing.

• Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven or deep pan.
• Sauté onion and garlic in oil until translucent.

• Add a couple spoonfuls of the same spice mix you used to coat chicken, beans, chilies, tomato, and hot sauce.
  • Thanks to my friend Daniel, I pureed about 1/3 of the beans before adding to the pan, this helps thicken the chili. 
  • The grocery had some gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and I used one for this chili and another I’m saving for Monday’s dinner.  Look how pretty!

• Add chicken broth to cover and bring to desired consistency. The longer you cook your chili, the thicker it will get.  We let ours simmer for several hours, so I added quite a bit of broth to make it pretty soupy at first.

• Heat on low until everything is nice and hot, and you can eat whenever you’re hungry.  This kind of thing usually only gets better and better as it cooks.  If it’s getting too thick, you can always add more chicken broth. You could also do this in a Crockpot and let it cook on low all day.
• Serve and add toppings of your choice…we went with shredded cheese and scallions.  Plus, some really great crusty bread from Macrina Bakery.  We have at least 2 servings ready for leftovers….I can’t wait!

Review of Julia’s

For a late breakfast on Saturday, Matt and I went to Julia’s in Wallingford.   Julia’s is a mini-chain in the Seattle area, and the one in Wallingford is the original (plus they have a bakery!).  The one in the Capital Hill neighborhood is apparently also great and has drag show fun on the weekends! I was craving breakfast burritos when we got out of bed and Matt was a sweetheart and did some internet searching to find some options.

Mae’s Cafe, down the street from our apartment, has an amazing breakfast burrito that comes with delicious black beans, spicy chorizo and a big pile of hash browns, but we were feeling something new, and Julia’s had the best selection of burritos, according to their online menu.  Plus, it’s really close to us and to a grocery store, which we needed to visit.

We were seated really quickly…it wasn’t packed, but we were also coming at about 11am, so the breakfast crowd was probably a little earlier in the morning.  I ordered the Disayuno Burrito (Large whole wheat tortilla, eggs, bacon, tomato, scallions, cheddar cheese, topped with sour cream and salsa) and Matt had the Herb & 3 Cheese Omelet (Swiss, Cheddar, Parmesan, Scallions and Italian Herbs). We both had coffee (which they refilled constantly!) and both of our dishes came with fried potatoes.

The coffee was great…I usually go with juice for breakfast, but they use Caffé Vita coffee, which is delicious and locally wonderful!

Our food came out really quickly and was majorly yummy! We of course tried the potatoes first, which were super flavorful and cooked to perfection, with lots of little bits of darkened potato that were nice and caramelized.   Both the potatoes and Matt’s omelet were SUPER seasoned…He enjoyed the omelet, but the bit I tried had a bit too much of a dried herb flavor for me.  The texture was fairly soft without him even asking for it soft, and it was mucho cheesy.  He also had toast, which I stole some of…I love toast with jam!

My burrito was also yum….if I had thought ahead of time, I would have asked for the sour cream and salsa on the side, because they put them right on top, so there was no way I could pick up the burrito.  So I cut it up and ate it with fork and knife (NOT as fun!).  Still delicious though!  I liked the whole wheat wrap a lot, and the amount of filling was perfect.  The bacon was cut into tiny tiny pieces and was not particularly prominent, and I would have preferred either nice thick slices, or at least bigger, crunchy pieces throughout.  The salsa was great and the sour cream got on my potatoes, which made them even better!!

Overall, a great breakfast! It looks like they have a fun happy hour snack menu too, so I wouldn’t mind going back sometime for that! Plus we have a coupon that can only be used during the week…maybe we’ll make it a recurring place. 

Dori and Matt’s mom are crazy about breakfast so we’re always keeping track of places we like so we can prepare for their visits.  We’ll definitely put this one on the list!! 

…Again

 

Still in Oregon…at least today’s fair was only 15 minutes from my hotel, so no crazy morning driving like the last couple days!  Yesterday’s lunch was SO GOOD (for a catered lunch at a university anyway).  Veggie trays, salad, Black Bean Corn Fiesta Rice, 5 choices of wraps (I chose chicken Caesar, because I’m predictable), cookie trays, lots of drink choices! Yum! The wrap was one of the best chicken Caesar wraps I’ve had….it was basically a chicken salad type filling, made with Caesar dressing instead of mayo, with some onions, and wrapped with some really nice red leaf lettuce, all on a tomato wrap.  So good! I spread my lunch out throughout the day because the fair was 6 freakin’ hours long.  I got some work emails answered and other random things done in the chunks of time when I wasn’t talking to prospects, so it was a pretty productive and yummy 6 hours all around.

Because I had the salad and the wrap for lunch, I wasn’t in the mood for a sandwich or salad from the organic place next to the hotel, so I walked 15 minutes or so down the road to a Mexican restaurant.  I munched on chips and salsa and ordered a small combination plate with an enchilada and tamale along with rice and beans.  Decent Mexican, not the best, not the worst.  Very satisfying.  I also ordered a small melon margarita…YUM! Piece of advice: DO NOT HAVE A FILLING MEXICAN MEAL AND A MARGARITA KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE TO WALK AFTERWARDS!  It wasn’t a long walk, and I called Matt on the way, but it was hot and my tummy was full, and I just wanted to be back in the hotel resting!

A very serious matter:  Missy, over at Missy Maintains, is having a Big S Farms Salsa recipe contest and I entered! Go now and vote for your favorite!! (if you can’t choose a favorite, just vote for me, it will be ok, I promise)

Also don’t forget to enter Dori’s doormat giveaway!

Are any of you looking for afghans?? It might be getting warm now, but think of how chilly you get in the middle of January!  Well, my mom crochets like a fiend and makes tons and tons of afghans…she constantly has at least 2 or 3 going.  Anyway, I showed her the Etsy website and she put some of her afghans up for sale.  Guys, I have SO many afghans right now.  They’re amazing and they last for a long time (unless you give them to Santana, who digs digs digs them and they get full of puppy fur).  She is still working on getting her Etsy shop all set up, so it’s bare bones basics with pictures of the afghans she already has done right now, but more to come! So if you’re looking for a homemade gift or a cuddly throw for your own couch, show my mom some love!

Some contests you should check out for Earth Day celebration:

Danica’s Daily’s Annie’s Naturals Dressings Giveaway (three winners!!!)

Run to the Finish is giving away Baumann’s products (YUM!)

Carrots ‘N’ Cake’s Stonyfield Giveaway!

Cooking with Amy’s Scanpan and cookbook giveaway!