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Archive for February, 2009

Things I have recently loved and some food experiments

Some mini-reviews of recent things that have made me smile:

• The Lion King – we had tickets on February 14th to see The Lion King (musical) at the Paramount in Seattle.  I’m a pretty huge fan of Disney cartoons in general, and an even bigger fan of musicals.  Growing up in a tiny tiny town in Central NY and going to school in the middle of Kentucky didn’t really lend themselves to a lot of musical theater experience along the way…some, but not a lot.  Broadway Across America is a spectacular program that takes Broadway shows across the country.  I’m not sure how they do in other cities, but the ones we’ve seen here in Seattle so far have been so wonderful.  We’ve seen Avenue Q, The Color Purple and The Lion King so far.  We have season tickets through the year which include August Osage County, Fiddler on the Roof, Frost/Nixon, and Wicked!  We’ve missed a few that have been in the city because of scheduling and money and a variety of other random things (including our inability to remember half of things that make us say “Oooh! We have to do that!”).  Anyway, we had tickets a while ago, and when Matt’s mom and sister planned to visit, we jumped on the opportunity and got some extra seats for them…we had a delicious dinner ahead of time and the show was SPECTACULAR! The staging completely blew me away (I’m not saying anything new about The Lion King here), and I thought the particular group of performers worked well together.  Plus, the Paramount Theater is unbelievably gorgeous and we always love when we get to shows there.  Of the musicals I’ve seen so far, this one is definitely the one I’d recommend if you could only make it to one show ever.  I would also strongly recommend shows at the Paramount for anyone living in or visiting the Seattle area!

• Pumpkin Butter – everytime we get to one of the Seattle markets, I manage to get at least two samples of pumpkin butter and yet haven’t gotten around to buying any yet (I have an annoying habit of forgetting to bring cash when we head to a market).  I’m not sure who it is that brings this particular pumpkin butter to our markets, but it is the smoothest, most satisfying bit of sweetness I have found yet…if we’re planning a trip to the market, I’m usually craving the little wooden stick dipped in pumpkin butter on the way there! When Dori was here, she brought me some Bauman’s Pumpkin Butter–made by a Pennsylvania Dutch family, with no sugar added! So now I have my own pumpkin butter at home!! It is not quite the same as the kind I always sample downtown, but it is extremely tasty and as Dori has noted in her review of Chobani yogurt, it is delicious in vanilla yogurt! I haven’t tried Chobani yet, as it’s not in my store, but even in cheap vanilla yogurt from Safeway, it was heavenly.  I am trying to come up with lots of ways to use the pumpkin butter, since I don’t want it to go bad, and I don’t think we eat enough yogurt to go through our tiny jar just as a mix-in.  If I come up with anything spectacular, I will definitely post some pictures/recipes!

• Weeds – My brother would be highly disappointed: we’re cancelling our cable.  Basically, it is ridiculously expensive, and we really only watch a few shows on a super-regular basis.  Since Matt got us a subscription to Netflix for our anniversary a few months ago (which comes with Instant streaming of tons of movies and tv shows on the computer or his XBox), we have been getting completely addicted to TV shows; we’re both very satisfied by starting and finishing an entire season of a show in order.  We’ve gone through almost 3 seasons of Law and Order: SVU, every available episode of 30 Rock and The Office, and some random cartoons from our childhoods.  Plus, we’ve enjoyed some documentaries we probably would never have watched otherwise: The Business of Being Born, Man on Wire, a scrabble documentary that I can’t remember the name of, and we have a ton more on our list! Needless to say, we spend more time with Netflix than we do with cable, so out it goes.  Anyway, we just started watching the Showtime series, Weeds.  We’re four or five episodes into the first season and this is one of the most adorable and funny shows I’ve watched lately…Matt says it always “keeps you on your heels”…I told him that’s not an actual phrase, but I got his meaning, and I agree.  It switches from hilarious, to poignant, to cathartic really quickly and creates this fictional world that deals really well with a lot of issues in the “real world”.  Granted, we’re only a few episodes in, but even if it gets horrible from here on out, it’s definitely worth watching the first few just to see what they did with it!! If it turns nauseating, I will update the blog and rescind my love for the series as a whole!  In addition, the theme song, “Little Boxes” (and the music they use overall) is completely wonderful and lifts my spirits when I am grumpy or stressed.

• Externships from Auburn University’s vet school – one of my absolutely best, most wonderful, closest, amazing friends is probably coming to visit!!! She is just starting her clinical work in vet school at Auburn University in Alabama and she gets an externship where she can choose the location and try out some new places…apparently Seattle has some wonderful vet thing that she wants to get into, so she will hopefully be here for 2 weeks in August (a gorgeous time to visit the city!).  I am ridiculously excited about this and know that she is too…not only about visiting, but also about being to this point in her education…she has been working towards this for SO long and spent her time at UK making the most of every pre-vet/development/educational/professional opportunity she could find (hell, she did foal watching Friday nights from 7pm-7am during the entire Spring semester for the entire time we were there…and she doesn’t even like horses!!). I am crazy proud of her and couldn’t be more excited to celebrate and show her Seattle!

We’ve done some food experimenting lately.  A few highlights:

One of Matt’s favorite things to get at the MS cafeteria is Major Grey’s chicken.  An Indian dish with mangos and spice and yumminess! I’ve never had it, but he got the recipe from a coworker who had figured it out, and we put it together.  Matt was extremely pleased with it and I completely loved it…it was similar to a mango chicken that we had made a while ago using a Cooking Light recipe as a starting point and switching it up a bit (this one used mango chutney and the previous one used fresh mango and included cashews), and we topped it with fried green onions.  Over rice, this was ridiculously satisfying.  We tried to make a chickpea/spinach side dish to go with it, but the recipe we used just didn’t turn out the way we expected, so it was a dinner full of chicken and rice…nothing to really complain about there! 🙂

I keep telling myself I want to use the crockpot more often, because when I do, it really has amazing results.  This was a baked potato soup that I just sort of threw together with some potatoes that I had left from a CSA box one week.  I cooked potatoes, a bit of broth, sauteed onions, and some herbs and spices in the crock pot all day while we were at work.  When I got home, I used the stick blender to puree the mix (leaving some chunks of potatoes) and then added a can of corn and some sliced green onions (I think I also had to add a little more liquid to thin it out just a bit).  Topped it with cheese and bacon (duh) and made some cheesy toast squares to go with it.  Unbelievably delicious and filling.

This one was completely new for us.  We had gotten parsnips in our CSA box two weeks ago and I had never eaten or cooked with them before.  They look like strange white-ish carrots and have a really similar smell and taste (a bit sweeter/stronger).  We also had potatoes left, so I basically made mashed/whipped potatoes and parsnips–I think it turned out to be a 1:1 ratio of the two, blended with the stick blender to get them smooth, with some butter and milk or cream (I don’t remember which we had on hand).  I had thawed out a gigantic chicken breast that we had in the freezer and was just planning on doing a pan fry or bake, with some kind of sauce and a side vegetable, but Matt said “How about a casserole!?”, so we went with that and completely did it off the cuff.  1 chopped chicken breast, 1 can of rinsed green beans, 1 can of slightly drained petite diced tomatoes, 1 can of condensed cheddar cheese soup, and a little milk to thin it out enough to mix.  All of that went into a greased casserole dish and I topped it with a mix of seasoned breadcrumbs and some shredded cheddar we had on hand.  The tomatoes were a great addition because they cut through the creaminess of the cheese with some acidity.  The casserole came out a bit soupier than I would normally want a casserole, but when we put it with the parsnip potato mash, the two came together to form this really smooth, satisfying bite of food that was almost like a thick, creamy stew.  This was the epitome of a cold-weather comfort food (I should take this to Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown with Guy! A show that I have only seen a few times…it’s ridiculously fun to watch!).  And Kudos to Matt for suggesting a casserole! With a boneless chicken breast (especially one that has been frozen), a straight bake, broil, pan fry  or whatever would not have been as satisfying.  Baked in the oven in chunks with a casserole, it really works and I think you’re probably going to get the most satisfaction from the white meat this way.

Another reason I am super pumped for V to come visit is that she is one of my most favorite people to cook for!! We lived together in KY for two years and in that time we definitely learned a lot of each other’s quirks.  She is a super fussy eater in some ways and while that might be annoying for someone who loves to do most of the cooking, it actually was pretty wonderful, because it helped me become a better and more flexible cook.  She is pretty much hesitant to eat leftovers, so I have become adept at planning a week’s meals so that I can make something one night and then turn it into a completely different dish a few nights later.  The thing I love the most: when I’d make something she loved for dinner, it would be crazy obvious from her reaction…like a little kid eating ice cream, her face would light up and she’d look euphorically happy in her chair with her plate of dinner! Then (also like a kid with ice cream), she would ask for her favorites over and over again…this makes me SO happy! Don’t get me wrong, Matt does this too, but he is a bit less fussy and I get more excited about cooking with him and teaching him his way around the kitchen.  With V, she was the first person I lived with and cooked for on a regular basis for a long period of time, and it meant the world to me then to have someone so excited for a meal I made! (I also used to put her good grades up on the fridge and fret over her when she was sick;  she dealt with me having mini-meltdowns over my thesis and being away from home; we both did a lot of listening to the other about major family crises…so there is no denying that we got attached)  Aaaanyway, I think this is really indicative of why I love to cook and to feed people…I like to experiment, try new things, create recipes, whatever…but most of all I like to see the people I’m feeding completely satisfied by what I’ve made for them.  Blogging about the stuff we’ve made is really just another outlet for expressing the satisfaction I get from cooking, eating and feeding!

Family. Pork. Falling Behind.

I have some catching up to do…with crazy amounts of local and out-of-state recruiting along with application review starting up at work, Matt‘s family visiting from NY, nice weather starting to roll in, and other general business, I have gotten way behind in posting yummy food, random news/things from Jezebel that excite me, adorable puppy things and other bits of things.  I am also working from an interim laptop until I get a new one (long story which will probably result in a blog post ranting about the importance of customer service sometime soon), and this machine happens to have Linux on it…it’s all fine for email, Facebook, random interndet needs, but it doesn’t have all the fun blog software I had in Windows.  Once I have a shiny new computer to work on, blogging will become a more regular thing…that might be the 3rd or 4th time I’ve made that claim, so we’ll see.

Moving along…

Matt’s mom and sister were in town for a weekend and it was spectacular! A long weekend full of running around and busy excitement, but we had a great time, were super excited to see them, and I was really glad that they got to spend some quality time bonding with Santana (as if she needed the attention).  She was EXHAUSTED after they left.  I’m sure she’ll blog about it sometime soon. In the meantime, you can see a recap of the weekend, along with some adorable pictures on Dori’s Shiny Blog.

I’m going to try and get caught up with some delicious meals we’ve been experimenting with lately.  Rather than post one massive entry with all of them, I’ll do one at a time, and eventually we’ll be up to speed.

First up, in no particular order, Maple-Glazed Pork with Apples and Roasted Winter Vegetables.  Although I used the pork/apples from this recipe and the veggies from this one, we didn’t completely follow the recipes because we had a random assortment of vegetables (from our CSA!) and couldn’t find apple cider at our Safeway that week.

Carrots, Garnet (or jewel?) Yams, Onions, Beets (all from our CSA box)!! This was my first time making beets and Matt’s first time eating them.  As a kid I always had canned beets as a side with dinner, but I don’t remember being crazy about them.  At Bastyr, they are always available on the salad bar, so I’m getting used to them…they stain everything if you’re not careful…you can see my pink-stained hand after touching the beets just briefly!  I peeled them under running water and cut them quickly and we didn’t have any lasting damage.  I am usually amazed by the bright vibrant colors of fruits and vegetables…look at all the nutrients!!

We bought a new peeler the other day…it has serrated edges and says that it works well on soft fruits and veggies (I think they specifically mention tomatoes).  I haven’t tried it on anything quite that soft yet, but on these veggies and on the apples, the serrated peeler was spectacular! I totally recommend it! It did not work so well on carrots (I use my regular peeler to peel long, thick-ish strips that I cut in half when we make fried rice).

Here are all the veggies ready to be roasted! You can see that the beets have turned everything a little pink along the edges:

Now the pork!! Lightly coated in breadcrumbs (just enough for a crust, no egg wash or anything messy needed), and pan fried over high heat to get the crust brown. Yum!  These were pre-cut thin pork medallions…straight from the store package, they didn’t need any prep work. This is my dream.  I love fresh meat, and I’m really satisfied if I can break down a whole chicken or something, but this made the pork portion of the meal sooo easy.  Plus, they were on sale!

Now the apples! These also came via Full Circle Farm, and we’d had them on hand for a couple weeks, so this was a great opportunity to use them, since they probably weren’t a great choice for eating out of hand.  I have this nifty apple corer/slicer that works much better when the apple is peeled (it doesn’t have the sharpest of edges, which is probably best, considering I end up with a bandaid on at least one of my fingers every week).  So my serrated peeler came in really handy and I made quick work of the apples, getting them right into the pan with browned pork…

This whole meal was really easy, and probably the hardest part was getting all the vegetables peeled and cut (Matt was a big help here!).  This was one of the easiest pork recipes I’ve ever made, and because I had my meat thermometer, I stopped the pork as soon as the thermometer registered it at medium.  It rested while I let the apples cook down and was SO tender and delicious when we ate it.  Matt was stunned.  The maple, mustardy, apple-y, glaze-type sauce that came from the pan was absolutely full of flavor, and it went really well with the roasted veggies.  If I made this again, I’d probably ditch the yams and save those for some other dish.  They got really soft and mushy (the nature of yams), and compared to the beets and carrots it was too much of a contrast for me.  Regular potatoes would have worked nicely, or any other root veg…I think the original recipe uses turnips? We also had a mini salad with some lettuce from our CSA and just some shredded cheese.  Needless to say, we felt super healthy after this meal and it always makes us happy when we can get so much use out of local and/or organic produce that we get specially delivered for us!

More to come soon!