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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!

 

The summer is flying by!

So I’d like to say that I have been off on some amazing adventures and that is why I’ve been absent from the blog for so long (almost a month!), but that is definitely not the case.

I have been busy with normal every-day things along with visitors, work events, hot weather and generally lots of stuff to distract me from new recipes and setting aside half an hour to write a blog post.

I do have a recipe almost ready to post from mid-July…since then there has been lots of comfort food, old recipes, hodge-podge dishes and eating out…LOTS of eating out.

A few food-related things to bring me back into blogland:

-        Julie & Julia

• Matt very wonderfully agreed to go see this with me.  I have been a huge fan of Julia Child since elementary school, when sick days meant I could lay in bed with my Grandma and watch Julia Child and Graham Kerr on PBS.  Not only do I love her story and her food, but her attitude cracks me up…every time I catch her on TV I can’t help laughing.  If you aren’t familiar with her background, the movie does a good job of the events leading up to her cooking fame.
• The Amy Adams portion of Julie & Julia was done really well.  It’s a great comparison of the cookbook/food television/celebrity chef pioneer in Julia Child and the food blogging/internet celebrity pioneer of Julie Powell.  The two stories butted up against each other nicely and Adams and Chris Messina portray a really uniquely intimate couple with an amazing and fun relationship to food and the role it plays in their lives (even before Julie sets out on the year-long blogging endeavor).
• Of particular importance…the FOOD!   There are plenty of times in movies and books when the food looks or sounds so amazing that I need to go out and find a recipe…there were several points in Julie & Julia that I felt this urge.  The most was with the bruschetta near the beginning of the movie, when Julie and her husband come to the conclusion that she should write a food blog.  The fried bread topped with the juicy pile of cherry tomatoes soaking in looked AMAZING. I may have to make some of this very soon.
• Beyond all this, Meryl Streep as Julia Child blew the movie out of the water.  She was insanely amazing.  If Julie Powell’s story was made into its own movie, I might go to see it…would definitely get it from Netflix after it was on DVD.  If the Julia Child portion of the movie stood on it’s own, I would be all over it.  Not only because Child’s story is so interesting, but because Meryl Streep did an unbelievable job of portraying such a unique and iconic figure in our culture.  She got the voice, the mannerisms, the humor, everything down pat.  Loved it.  I spent a lot of time laughing, and a few times crying along with Julia (in both happiness and sadness).
• Bottom line, the movie made me HUNGRY!  Good thing we had dinner plans afterward… 🙂

-   As a part of the Tastemaker program with Foodbuzz, I had the exciting pleasure of getting a box full of goodies from Emeril a few weeks ago!  With a chicken spice rub (yet-to-be-tried), a large box of organic chicken stock (HOORAY!), Emeril’s Original Essence Seasoning (fun!) and specialty kicked-up horseradish mustard (brown mustard that we used in recreating this dish and Veronica used on her sandwiches for lunch during the two weeks she was visiting), I had a very very Emeril-filled kitchen for a while.  The seasonings are still in my cupboard, since they’ll take a while to get through, but the stock got used up quickly in a few different dishes and the mustard was perfect in the Maple Pork and Apples.  Delicious!  Thanks Foodbuzz and Emeril (who I’m not a huge fan of, but who makes some pretty delicious products and recipes)!

-    I also have some coupons from Nakano Seasoned Rice Vinegars which I hope are still good…I haven’t redeemed them yet, but am excited to try some out with the recipe book they included! There are a bunch of flavors on their website. I’m not sure which I want to try!  The garlic and pesto sound yummy, but I am also a big balsamic fan, so I may have to go that route…we’ll see what our grocery store offers!

Goals:

1 – Post the blog that is sitting there waiting for me to add pictures and hit “Publish”

2 – Find some Nakano vinegar and create something yummy to share with you

3 – Get back on track with new food adventures and blogging regularly

Wish me luck!

(Matt’s mom & aunt are in town this weekend! Exciting! But, probably not a ton of blogging will be done…stay tuned!)

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!!

Ground Turkey Lettuce Wraps & Egg Rolls

When our CSA gave us two heads of leafy green lettuce instead of the one we were expecting, I was wracking my head for something other than another salad.  Loosely based on the filling in this egg roll recipe and some suggestions from friends, I experimented with some lettuce wraps and ended up with a fun leftover treat!

Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps

I don’t remember exactly what went in here, but there was definitely the following:

• 1 pound ground turkey, browned and drained
• finely finely minced onions, carrots, red pepper, ginger
• a variety of spices, including red pepper, black pepper, and some other random add-ins
• 1 bunch sliced scallions
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 6-8 tb. rice vinegar
• 2-3 tb. sesame oil
• I may have added some veggie broth to give it some more liquid while it cooked and cooked and cooked down

Basically, everything just cooked together for a long long time. It smelled amazing and it turned out a bit too salty for Matt.  But wrapped together with some crispy mei fun noodles in big pieces of fresh lettuce, it was a wonderful and fun (and messy!) meal!

     

Since there was obviously no way we were going to eat an entire pound of ground turkey ourselves, the leftover meat went into a pyrex dish with the crispy noodles, which soaked up the yummy juices and the whole thing became a really wonderful filling for baked egg rolls!  With a package of egg roll wrappers, I made about 16 egg rolls that went into the freezer for later! 

While enjoying a lazy day on the couch and craving a snack one afternoon, Matt and I tried a couple to hold us over until dinner.  Yum!  With Matt’s honey soy sauce that he makes every time we make dumplings, they were spectacular.  We had them again the other night with some orange chicken from the freezer (not homemade at all!), and the flavors of the two dishes didn’t really work together, but the filling in the egg rolls is just the right texture and full of spice and pretty unique kick.  It could use some cabbage, but we just didn’t have any when I made them. 

I was extremely happy when I had all my egg rolls lined up on a baking sheet to freeze…I love love love using leftovers like this!