And ANOTHER cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

• grilled lamb patties
  
• whole-wheat pita
  
• lettuce and tomato
  
• quick pickled onions
• herby yogurt dressing
  

Here's another supper that will keep your kitchen nice and cool, assuming your grill doesn't run out of propane halfway through cooking the lamb like mine did. Oy. (I finished them under the broiler for a couple of minutes, and they were fine. But still.)

I think I've told you that we've been eating a lot of lamb lately, and we've discovered that we really kind of love it. For the patties, I mixed ground lamb with some minced onion and garlic, chopped fresh parsley and cilantro, a bit of olive oil (the ground lamb I buy tends to be VERY lean), salt, pepper, chili powder, and some whole coriander and cumin seeds that were toasted in a dry skillet and then ground to a powder with the mortar and pestle. (Hey, if you've got ground cumin and coriander in your spice cabinet and you can't be bothered to toast and grind whole spices, use what you've got. I'm not here to force anyone to toast and grind spices, though I do think that adds a nice extra layer of flavor.)

The lamb mixture was formed into balls slightly bigger than golfballs and then flattened into patties. Think of them as mini lamb burgers, if you will -- slider sized, rather than burger sized. I grilled them for about 5 minutes per side over medium heat, or I would have if I hadn't run out of propane. Grrr!

The pita was purchased, and the lettuce and tomato was (were?) just leaves of romaine and sliced vine-ripe tomatoes (from the store, because my garden sucks this year AGAIN).

I've made these picked onions before and they are seriously addicting. All I did was whisk together a tablespoon or so of red wine vinegar, maybe a third as much olive oil, and a tiny bit of sugar. Then I tossed in some thinly sliced red onions and just let them sit, stirring/tossing occasionally, while the meat cooked. So good!

For the dressing, all I did was mix some plain Greek-style yogurt with some minced garlic, chopped fresh herbs (mint, cilantro and parsley) and fresh lemon juice.

You can assemble these however you like, but I like to stuff a pita with a couple of lamb patties, some romaine and a couple of slices of tomato, then top it with the pickled onions and drizzle the yogurt dressing on top. This is seriously one of my favorite dinners that I've ever made, people. It beats takeout any day!

Here's the timeline. A LOT of this can be done ahead of time, like even the day before.

• Up to one day ahead, make the yogurt dressing and stick it in the fridge.
• Also up to one day ahead, make the pickled onions (you CAN wait until pretty much the last minute on these, if you don't want to make them ahead).
• And hey, while you're at it, you could totally make the meat mixture ahead of time and form it into patties, refrigerating it on wax-paper-lined cookie sheets until you're ready to grill.
• For that matter, you could wash and portion out the lettuce ahead of time, too! Wow, this timeline is pretty useless, eh?
• Okay, at some point you will need to grill the lamb patties. This will take about 10 minutes total.
• While the lamb is grilling, slice your UNREFRIGERATED tomato. You know not to refrigerate your tomatoes until after they're sliced up or in a mixed salad or something, right? They'll retain a lot more flavor if you keep them out of the fridge as much as possible. So yeah, do this one at the last minute.
• Take the meat off the grill, lay everything out so folks can build their own pita, and serve it up!

Lamb pita FTW!

Tonight's Menu

• tiny spiced lamb meatballs w/tzatziki
  
• whole-wheat pita
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Hey, so I cooked lamb for the first time ever tonight and it was surprisingly (because as you longtime readers know, I don't have such a great track record with kitchen experimentation) delicious! It almost tasted like I knew what I was doing! Weird!

What I did was take a couple of cloves of garlic and some fresh herbs from my garden (mostly parsley, with a bit of oregano and mint -- my mint is JUST NOW coming back from winter) and whiz them up in a little mini food processor that I always forget I have. It made a sort of paste, which I added to 1.5 pounds of ground lamb, some salt and pepper, dried cumin and coriander, chili powder, garam masala, an egg and some dry bread crumbs. I formed it into teeny tiny meatballs, using about a teaspoon of lamb mixture for each ball, and put them on a foil-lined baking sheet. Then I popped them in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 25 minutes. (Digression -- I ALWAYS bake my meatballs instead of frying them. It's so much easier, and there's less to clean up. Plus they are lower in fat, without the added oil and whatnot. Try it!)

Oh, people. They were so good! Really aromatic without any one spice overpowering another. I only wish I had measured the spices, so I'd know how much to tell you to use if you make this. You'll just have to wing it like I did!

I had never made tzatziki before tonight, either. I know! I love it and could eat it on just about anything, but I've never actually MADE it, and it was so easy! All I did was peel and grate a bit of cucumber (I used the seedless kind, but if you use the regular just scrape out the seeds before grating) onto a paper towel, then wrap it all up and squeeze it over the sink to get most of the water out. Then I dumped the cucumber into a bowl and added a couple of very finely minced garlic cloves, the juice of half a lemon, and a bit of EVOO. I tossed that around with a fork to combine, then stirred in about a cup of Greek-style yogurt (I found this at my local SuperTarget, believe it or not) and a wee bit of salt to taste. I refrigerated it for a few hours to let the flavors meld before serving. It was really good, but I used a WEE bit too much garlic, I think. I'm sort of breathing fire now. At least I don't have to worry about vampire attacks for the next few days. Hee!

The pita was purchased. I've heard it's easy to make and keep meaning to try it, but not tonight!

The salad bar was chopped romaine lettuce, sliced green onions, sliced carrots from the garden, and the last of the cherry tomatoes.

What I did, and no one else really followed my example, was fill my pita with chopped romaine, top that with some meatballs, and drizzle some tzatziki on top. It was pure heaven, people. Thank goodness there were leftovers!

Pork roast redux

Tonight's Menu

• BBQ pork sandwiches
  
• tangy apple coleslaw
  

It was leftovers night here at Chez Badger, y'all. We have a TON of pork roast left from last night, so I took a bit of that, heated it in the microwave with some bottled Carolina-style barbecue sauce, and served it on buns with sliced onions. Yummy and fast!

The coleslaw recipe is here. I used savoy cabbage because that's what I had (half a head left over from last night's saute).

I probably should have rustled up some chips or pickles or something to go with this, but I couldn't be bothered. Leftovers night = lazy night, yo.

Barbecue!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued pork on buns
• marinated cucumber salad
• sliced tomatoes
  

Finally, the boy was feeling good enough to eat "normal" food tonight! So I went whole hog (hee! see what I did there?) and made some barbecued pork sandwiches for dinner.

I have to admit, this pork was sort of an experiment. What I did was take a shoulder roast, rub it with salt, pepper, garlic powder and paprika, and stick it on a rack in a roasting pan. Then I added some water to the bottom of the pan and dropped in two large-ish whole sprigs of rosemary. The idea was to get the rosemary to barely scent/flavor the meat. I covered the pan tightly with heavy-duty foil and stuck it in the oven at 200 degrees F for about 5 hours.

When I pulled it out of the oven I stuck an instant-read thermometer in the roast just to be sure it was fully cooked, which it was, so then I removed it from the pan and set up the grill for indirect heat (two burners on medium, one burner unlit). I put the roast on the unlit burner and started basting it with a Carolina-style barbecue sauce (I buy this already made; it's a mustard-based sauce that goes great with pork).

After maybe 15 minutes total, flipping it from one side to another halfway through, the sauce had kind of baked on to the meat. There still wasn't any browning, though, so I flipped the roast over to one of the lit burners for just a couple of minutes per side to get some nice grill mark action going. Much better, aesthetically speaking! After resting it for a few minutes, I shredded it and served it on buns with thinly sliced sweet onions and more barbecue sauce on the side. Delicious! And not as much trouble as it sounds, honest.

This cucumber salad is one of my favorite things. DH and I first discovered it at a Hungarian restaurant near here and we absolutely fell in love with the way this refreshing, cool salad contrasted with the rather rich main dishes (I admit it, I'm a chicken paprikas addict). A couple of years ago I was poking around in an antique store when I found a little pamphlet of Hungarian recipes. Lo and behold, there was our favorite cucumber salad!

Here's how you make it: take two good-sized cucumbers, wash and peel them, then cut cross-wise into thin slices. Put them in a bowl and sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of salt, then set aside for one hour. After an hour, start squeezing the cucumber slices in your hand, discarding the liquid. Put the squeezed cucumbers into a non-reactive bowl, then mix together the following:

3 Tbs white vinegar
3 Tbs water
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 tsp minced garlic (I grated it with my microplane)

Pour the vinegar mixture over the cucumbers, toss to coat, then sprinkle another 1/4 tsp or so of paprika over top. Cover and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour. We like to serve it the way they do in the restaurant, with a tiny dollop of sour cream on top.

So yummy, and the crunchy, vinegary cucumbers were a nice foil to the rich barbecued pork!

Oh and P.S.: the cucumbers and tomatoes were from the CSA, natch.

Lazy dinner

Tonight's Menu

• slow-cooker barbecued pork on buns
  
• leftover coleslaw
  

This could not have been easier if we'd ordered takeout. All I did was dump a pork roast (sirloin, I think? or shoulder? you could use any cut you like) into the slow cooker, pour a bottle of Carolina-style barbecue sauce on top, cover and cook on low for about 8 hours. When it's done just shred the meat with two forks and ladle some of the sauce on top. Serve with some sandwich buns and thinly sliced sweet onion, and Bob's your uncle.

The coleslaw was leftover from Wednesday.

The girl child ate a pork sandwich AND some coleslaw. Unbelievable! I don't know who kidnapped my daughter and replaced her with this changeling who actually LIKES TO EAT, but I'm sorry, I'm keeping this one.

Crock-Pot pork

Tonight's Menu

• Crock-Pot barbecued pork on buns
  
• homemade coleslaw
  
• sweet corn on the cob
  

Super easy dinner tonight.

For the pork, all I did was slice an onion in half lengthwise, reserving one half and slicing the other half cross-wise. I put the onion in the bottom of the crockpot, stuck a pork roast on top (I used loin because it's lean, but you could use whatever), dumped in a bottle of barbecue sauce and cooked it all on low for 8 hours or so before shredding and serving on buns.

The coleslaw was just shredded cabbage tossed with a mixture of mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar and celery seed.

The corn was fresh, cleaned and then wrapped in wax paper before being steamed in the microwave.

If you make the coleslaw right after you start the meat and just stick it in the fridge all day, you can have this dinner on the table in 10 minutes.

Sausage sandwiches

Tonight's Menu

• sweet Italian sausage sandwiches w/peppers and onions
  
• coleslaw
  

I love grilled sausage but when it comes to the fresh (as opposed to smoked/cured) variety, I am paranoid about getting them cooked all the way through. So what I do is simmer them in water on the stove for about 15 minutes or so, then grill them just to get them brown and crisp up the skins. Tonight I used my grill pan because it was a little bit too chilly to grill outdoors. I sauteed some sweet yellow onion along with red and yellow bell peppers in EVOO, seasoned them with salt and pepper, and served the whole thing in fresh wheat rolls from the bakery. Yum!

Now that I have the hang of making coleslaw from scratch, I will never buy it prepared again! It's so easy to shred cabbage with a nice sharp knife, and creamy coleslaw dressing is a cinch. For one head of cabbage, use about 1/2 cup mayonnaise, 2 Tbs. sugar and 2 Tbs. white vinegar. Sometimes I add a teaspoon or so of celery seed. Mix it all together until it's smooth, then toss with the shredded cabbage and chill for a couple of hours. It really takes no time at all.

Sandwich night

No actual menu tonight; instead we had a sandwich bar kind of thing. I set out the following:

• whole-grain bread
• whole-wheat sub rolls
• sesame hamburger buns
• honey ham
• two kinds of turkey (oven roasted and mesquite)(this is all prepared lunchmeat, by the way -- I didn't COOK a turkey, much less two of them and a ham!)
• American cheese slices
• shredded cheddar (hey, it's what we had)
• cooked bacon (two slices per person)
• sliced tomatoes
• fresh basil leaves in lieu of salad greens
• sliced avocado
• condiments (mayo, two kinds of mustard, ketchup because DH insists, etc.)

I had a sub roll with mayo, brown mustard, mesquite turkey, shredded cheddar, bacon, tomatoes, basil and avocado and I may not eat again for a week. Damn, I'm stuffed!

The boy had a peanut butter sandwich on whole-grain bread and two slices of bacon. Oy. He was excused from needing a fruit/veg because he ate a whole can of pears (in juice, not syrup) before dinner.

The girl had a sesame bun with bacon and American cheese. And some raw baby carrots.

I have no idea what DH ate except that it was on a sesame bun and probably involved ham since he's allergic to turkey.

I usually do sandwich night when I don't feel like cooking. Although by the time you get everything out and slice the veggies and whatnot and then put it all away again, it's almost as much work as a full meal!

Day 67

Adult Menu

• grilled Italian sausage sandwiches w/sauteed onions and peppers on whole wheat rolls
  
• sliced homegrown tomatoes w/sea salt
  

Girl Child
Ate some shredded cheese, some leftover biscuits and some leftover salad from the other night.

Boy Child
Had shredded cheese and salad with a banana.

I've had a lot of sausage-grilling disasters in my time, y'all. It's so hard to get the inside cooked without charring the outside to a crisp. HOWEVER, I've finally figured it out. I simmer the sausages first in a pot of water or beer for about 15 minutes. Then I just brown them off on the grill (maybe 4-5 minutes per side depending on how hot the grill is). They get cooked through but stay moist and juicy inside with a nice, crisp skin. Yum!

I saute the peppers and onions in EVOO (and plenty of it, because I like them drippy for sandwiches) and then season with salt and pepper. Make sure you don't turn the heat up too high on the onions/peppers or you'll end up frying them instead. You want them kind of soft but still with some body to them, and preferably no browning. I usually put them on the stove right before I slap the sausages on the grill, stir frequently, and by the time the meat's done, so are the veggies.

Day 30

Adult Menu
DH made BLTs.

Girl Child
She slept over at a friend's house and ate dinner there. I think they had pizza.

Boy Child
Had some canned ravioli.

Friday is often fend for yourself day at our house because of our wacky schedule that afternoon/evening.

Day 21

Adult Menu*

• leftovers from last night
  

Girl Child
She had Campbell's Double Noodle soup leftover from lunch, raw baby carrots, and whole-grain saltines.

Boy Child
Had whole grain bread with margarine (Smart Balance -- no trans fats), some shredded mozzarella, and some raw snow peas.

*Just me again.

Day 20

Adult Menu

• crockpot pulled pork sandwiches (bbq sauce optional)
  
• potato salad (from scratch)
  
• coleslaw (ditto)
  
• a big pitcher of decaf iced tea
  

Girl Child
She said the pork looked and smelled really good, tried a bite and liked it, so she had some on a bun with no bbq sauce. But then she decided she didn't like it after all, and didn't eat it. I was a big softie and at her request I saved out some shredded cabbage with no coleslaw dressing, but she decided she didn't like THAT either, after trying it, so she didn't eat it. She ended up eating a teeny tiny piece of leftover steak from last week, a few deli ham slices, and a couple of raw baby carrots.

Boy Child
He was hesitant to try the pork but the girl child told him it tasted like chicken, so he tried a bite and thought it was good and let me put some on his plate (no bun or sauce). But then he didn't eat it. He did eat a bunch of shredded cabbage with no coleslaw dressing, and he made and ate a peanut butter sandwich. He tried the tea and said he liked it but it wasn't his favorite and he probably wouldn't want it very often. Then, when I gave him permission, he switched to water.

Sigh. This is one of my favorite meals, and takes a bit of time to prepare, but its reception was less than enthusiastic all the way around. Even DH made a crack about the tea being decaf (I can't have caffeine for medical reasons) and passed on it because he'd already had two glasses of tea today. And he said this particular potato salad, which I love and get recipe requests for all the time, is not his favorite.

Screw 'em all, man. More pork, potato salad, coleslaw and tea for me. And if I'm the only one eating it, it'll probably last a week, at least. Anyone want to come over?