Fish Packets

I think I'm in heaven. I emailed Nick the rice pilaf recipe for him to make while I went to Pilates, and showed him the recipe for the fish packets on the computer. When I got back from the gym, everything was almost ready!!! He better watch out, this might become a regular expectation :)

I got the recipe for the fish from the Pink Parsley blog. It was delicious!




A black bean and corn 'salsa' (I put sliced squash under there too) topped with a piece of cod coated with a spicy butter mixture.

Nick grilled the packets since there was no way we were turning on the oven in this 95 degree heat!!





I got this rice pilaf from the bulk bins at Hy-Vee, our local grocery store. It was a little liquidy (apparently that isn't a word), but still yummy!

Sunday Project

I had two projects today: clean out the fridge and freezer and organize my spices. I won't show you a pic of the fridge because it's embarrassing how many full fat items we have in there (whole milk, butter, sour cream, bacon grease, etc...)

I am quite proud, however, of how I decided to arrange my spices! We buy most of then in bulk from a spice store, Penzey's. Yesterday we bought 10 empty jars from them to help us organize. Today I pulled every spice I have from the pantry, above the stove, and other various cupboards:





The funniest part was when Nick said 'where's the rest of them?'!! Thankfully this is it. As I pondered how to organize them, Nick suggested that he take his saw and cut one of the drawers to make it a little higher so we could spices in there standing up. I had a better idea that didn't involve any tools (sorry honey):




An organized spice drawer means that I can do more of this:





Ok, I was just looking for an excuse to post a picture of my incredibly cute dog, Kimber.

Fajitas

We had leftover margarita mix in the fridge, so I thought, why not have fajitas for dinner?!? You can see the way my mind works :)

Steak was on sale at the grocery store, so steak fajitas it was! I bought an avocado to make homemade guacamole and lots of peppers and red onion. I decided to try a new salsa from our local specialty sauce company Don Juan...it was hot!! Nick grilled the steak and the peppers, and with the help of whole wheat tortillas they quickly disappeared!

Fresh Tomato Sauce

We got four huge tomatoes in our CSA this week from a hot house in Nebraska. It's great to have local tomatoes this early, but after a conversation with my Aunt who lives in Nebraska, I have mixed feelings about these guys due to the amount of energy needed to run the hot house.

Kimber apparently didn't like the way the tomatoes were grown either; when Nick left to take me to the bus one morning, she took a couple bites out of two of them!! With the two we had left, I made a fresh tomato sauce with basil also from our CSA bag. It's easy to make a simple sauce by sautéing garlic and onions in olive oil, then addding roughly chopped tomatoes and salt to the pot. I added some crushed red pepper as well. As soon as the pasta was done, I took it out of the pot and added it right to the sauce, making sure to drip in some starchy pasta water along with it. The starch helps the sauce cling to the noodles. I chopped fresh basil and added that to the pasta. Once I put the portions into bowls, I grated fresh Parmesan cheese on top! It was a simple pasta meal that we enjoyed on the back deck with a glass of red wine :)

Weekend Breakfast

My favorite meal of the day on my favorite days of the week :)

Saturday:
Homemade everything bagels with egg and cheese




Sunday:
Pancakes (Mark Bittman's recipe from How to Cook Everything) with real maple syrup and strawberries from the garden




These strawberries just keep on coming! I love it!!

Nick Makes Dinner

My husband is amazing! Twice this week he made dinner! The first time was Wednesday night when I got home late. He picked up our CSA (community supported agriculture) from the grocery store, and decided to make hamburgers and potato chips! It was an incredibly delicious (and fatty) meal! (those are his homemade hamburger buns from the freezer and lettuce from our garden)




Our arteries recovered somewhat when I made chicken fiesta salad for dinner the next night! By Friday, I was ready for another husband meal - it was day 1 of my Z-pack for a sinus infection and I took a three hour nap :)
Nick made Chicago style deep dish pizza with a recipe from Cooks Illustrated. It was delicious!! He used turkey Italian sausage from Werners, our favorite sausage making German food store:

Brisket!

Nick smoked a small brisket on the grill for a few hours, and it was amazing!

I made French fries to go with it, using this awesome method from Cooks Illustrated. You actually start the shoestring-cut potatoes in cold oil on the stove. As the oil comes to a boil (imagine Paula Deen saying that...hehe), the potatoes cook on the inside. Once the oil is hot, it gets the fries all crispy and brown on the outside! Yummy!

Radish Sandwiches

Sounds weird, I know, but they were really good! Nick got the idea from the blog Everything Begins with E:
http://everythingbeginswithane.blogspot.com/2011/05/rapturous-radish-sandwiches.html

Ours consisted of:
Pain Au Levin (Wheat Sourdough) from Farm to Market Bread Company
Boursin Garlic & Herb Cheese
Radishes from Rosedale Farmers Market
Microgreens from Rosedale

Even my carnivore hubby loved them :). They were perfect for an early summer lunch on the deck! Six of us passed the components and built our own:




I also served greens from our garden with homemade Cesar style dressing and lots of chips and salsa. Dessert included ice cream and strawberries fresh picked today from the garden:





Dinner tonight: smoked Brisket!!

Lots to Catch Up On

I might just post a bunch of photos for now!

Breakfast with homemade hash browns and bread from San Francisco:



Pulled pork smoked for five hours on our grill by Nick:



Pizza made with leftover pulled pork and barbecue sauce instead of tomato sauce:



Hamburgers with homemade Brioche buns made by Nick:



Bruschetta:



Lettuce from our garden:



More to come soon...

Cobb Salad Madness

Ok, I know it's been a long time since I've posted. I actually have a huge back log of photos and recipes just waiting to be posted! For now, I'm trying an upload directly from my new phone. Nick graduated from his Masters program today! We had a delicious lunch at our favorite brewery to celebrate. I then took a three and a half hour nap, thanks to a combination of jet lag and a week of traveling in California for work! When I woke up, I really didn't want a heavy dinner, so I went to the store to put my new Cooks Illustrated app to work (think shopping lists and built in timers!). I had lots of fun chopping and cooking the numerous components of Cobb Salad. A delicious dressing pulled together the greens from our garden, chicken, free range eggs, Nebraska tomatoes, avocados, and of course bacon, blue cheese, and chives on top! Can't wait to make this with our own tomatoes this summer :)

Update: Nick graduated two weeks ago now, it took me that long to find a good app for blogging!

Chicken and Broccoli Pasta with Blue Cheese Sauce

My favorite dish when I was in high school and went to Olive Garden (it's probably been eight years since I've been there), was Garlic Herb Chicken con Broccoli.  The creamy sauce, the "little ear" pasta, the crunchy broccoli and herb coated chicken....hmmm...I'm sure if I ate it now I would only be able to taste salt and fat :)  Keeping that in mind, I set out to make pasta for dinner with chicken and broccoli:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chicken-and-Broccoli-Alfredo-533

I made a few changes:

Half and Half instead of Whipping Cream

Blue Cheese instead of Monterey Jack

Added garlic when I cooked the chicken

It was a really good pasta.  I think next time I might add some cream cheese or something to make it a little more creamy (and maybe even use whole milk instead of half and half)

Bacon Egg and Cheese Biscuits

It had been awhile since I made biscuits, and it was a great Sunday morning to make breakfast.  I used my Cooks Illustrated biscuit recipe and while they didn't rise as much as I would have liked, they were still perfect for the sandwiches:

I made some breakfast potatoes (the third time I've done this on the blog?), again in a different way.  I parboiled the potatoes and added them to the diced onions and peppers and cooked them until they were well browned.

Of course we had to have some grapefruit to balance out the meal....

Pizza Toppings

I'm always looking for new pizza toppings to make pizza night more interesting.  Especially since Nick won't eat a pizza topped with lots of veggies unless there's sausage in there, too :)
I modeled this pizza after one that we get at our favorite pizza restaurant (Spin!).  Instead of sauce, I topped it with olive oil, salt and Italian seasonings.  Then I sliced potatoes really thin and put those on next.  More salt, and some cooked chicken went on before I topped it all with mozzarella cheese and fresh chopped garlic.

And of course, my veggie pizza:

Tofu Stir Fry

Imagine my shock when Nick said he not only wanted to eat more healthfully but also that he was willing to eat TOFU!  Yes!!  After much chopping I had all my ingredients for stir fry: red peppers, green peppers, carrots, broccoli, onions, tofu, garlic, ginger, and for the last step bean sprouts and green onions:

I then attempted to make a sweet and sour sauce.  While it didn't turn out all the way I thought it would, it was still good.  I mixed a little chicken stock, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, Chinese hot sauce, apricot jam (I know it sounds weird, but that's the sweet part), and a little cornstarch.  Stir fries come together so fast I didn't have time to take any pictures.  I heated the oil and added the garlic and ginger for less than a minute before adding the onions.  Once they had cooked for a minute, I added the tofu, then the rest of the veggies.  Once they had heated up, I threw in the sauce and boiled it for a minute then added the sprouts and green onions.  It was yummy!

Quick Pita Dinner

I needed a quick dinner and didn't have much in the way of fresh stuff in the fridge.  Thanks to our amazing grocery store nearby that stocks many Mexican-friendly ingredients (hence it's nickname Mexican Price Chopper), I always seem to have jalapenos, cilantro, and limes.  I decided to make some spicy chicken to stuff into pita pockets.  I marinated the chicken in olive oil, lime juice, garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, jalapenos, and cilantro.  I sauteed the chicken over high heat until it was cooked through.

Since we've been trying to eat a little more healthy, I made some bulgar pilaf to go along with it.  The main spice was supposed to be curry powder, but I only had garam masala, which with the shredded carrots tasted a little off.  Or maybe I just decided I don't really like the flavor of garam masala all that much!  It was ok, but I probably wouldn't make it again.  The pita pockets, on the other hand, were a great "what I had in the fridge" dish.

Macaroni and Cheese

My beautiful and tired sister came to visit during the first part of her spring break from nursing school.  I asked her what she wanted me to make her for dinner one night.  She chose Mac & Cheese!  
I decided to use sharp cheddar cheese and pepper jack:

Bekah helped me by shredding it in the food processor:

All good homemade mac and cheese recipes use a roux with butter, flour, milk and (in this recipe) chicken stock.  Once the white sauce thickens, you add the shredded cheese and some salt and pepper.

Throw in the pasta, put it in a casserole dish, top with bread crumbs mixed with melted butter, and bake until golden brown...

...and delicious

Chorizo Tacos

We had to dig deep in the freezer for this one.  I found a few chorizo sausages and decided to throw caution to the wind and try some tacos.  We were running seriously low (and possibly out) of most fresh veggies, so I sauteed onions and garlic before adding the chorizo (casing removed).  Finally, I added chopped cilantro and blackened some corn kernels from the freezer.  With salsa and sour cream, we had some delicious (and spicy!) tacos.

Shredded Hash Browns

What a delicious way to eat homemade hash browns!  Just like in a diner, shredded and fried potatoes go well with eggs and bacon...
Once the potatoes are shredded (a shredding disc on the food processor works wonders...), you have to wrap them up in a kitchen towel and squeeze all the water out of them.  This takes a bit of work, but it's an essential step!  Once you mix the potatoes with salt and pepper, they go into a skillet with some vegetable oil.

Cook the potatoes without moving on side, then invert them onto a plate and slide them back into the pan:

Mmmm...enjoy with other similarly delicious breakfast items:

Lettuce Wraps

The first time we had lettuce wraps was at PF Changs.  Let me just say, these are better :)


Oh, and Around the World in five days makes two stops in Asia.  I guess my time in Thailand yields extra weight!


Nick ground the pork for me with the Kitchen Aid:

One interesting ingredient is toasted rice powder.  I actually had to toast the rice in the skillet and then grind it into a fine meal with the mini food processor:

The pork is the only thing that's cooked in this recipe!  I marinated the pork in fish sauce while I  prepared everything else: more fish sauce, crushed red pepper, juice from two limes, sugar, some of the toasted rice powder, shallots, mint, and cilantro.


I cooked the pork in a little bit of chicken stock, sprinkled the toasted rice powder on there, and cooked it until it was no longer pink.  Once it cooled a bit, I added it to the mixture above.  Nick helped me wash and separate the lettuce, and we were ready to eat!