A cool-kitchen supper

Tonight's Menu

• grilled shrimp
  
• garlic bread
• grilled asparagus
  
• green salad "bar"

Oh people. It is already SO HOT here in central Texas. Too hot to sit outside while the food grills, unfortunately. The good news is, this meal pretty much cooked itself on the grill while I sat inside in my nice, cool, air-conditioned kitchen! Yes!

I deviated from the script a bit with this shrimp. We love our usual recipe, but I've been making it like once every 10 days or so and wanted something just a little bit different. So I mixed together about 1/2 cup of canola oil, 1/4 cup EVOO (I would have done ALL EVOO, but I was running low), a few glugs each of Worcestershire and hot sauce, a tablespoon or so of honey, the juice of one orange, one lemon and one lime, a bunch of minced fresh garlic, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper and poured it over two pounds of peeled jumbo shrimp. This marinated in the fridge for about 4 hours before I threaded the shrimp onto skewers and grilled them for 5 minutes per side over medium heat. They were really good!

The garlic bread was purchased at the store. I wrapped it in foil and stuck it on the top rack of the grill to warm up while the shrimp was cooking.

The asparagus was dead easy. I grilled it on a grill screen after I'd pulled off the shrimp. I drizzled it with EVOO and sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then grilled it for maybe 8 minutes total, tossing it around with tongs to brown it all over. Yum! This is my favorite way to eat asparagus (roasting it in the oven is a close second).

The salad bar was just chopped romaine, sliced carrots, sliced cucumber, and wedges of tomato.

Easy dinner, and the house stayed nice and cool! Good thing, because it was about 98 degrees out on the patio -- yikes!

The long-awaited reappearance of trout

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed trout fillets
  
• ricotta-stuffed mushrooms
  
• green salad "bar"
  

It's been forever since I made fish for dinner and I'm not really sure why. We were eating a lot of tilapia for a while there, and I guess I kind of got sick of it. Anyway, my supermarket had some really nice rainbow trout fillets today, so I bought a couple and just seasoned them with a bit of salt and pepper before sauteing them in EVOO on the stovetop. I always start them skin-side down but I have no idea if that even matters. They were delicious and the boy had seconds and made a point of telling me how good they were. Remind me to start cooking fish more often!

I had a bunch of cheese filling leftover from when I made ravioli the other day and was looking for a way to use it up. I figured I could either make more ravioli (um, no), make lasagne (maybe, but that would involve the making of a meat sauce, which takes a while) or stuff mushrooms with it (bingo!). I modified the cheese filling slightly by mincing the mushroom stems and a couple of cloves of garlic and cooking those together in a skillet with some EVOO until soft. Then I cooled them and mixed them with the leftover ravioli filling, stuffing the mushrooms from whence came the stems and baking them in a foil-lined pan for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees F. I thought they were absolutely delicious, but DH is not a huge fan of ricotta and prefers the cream cheese-based mushroom stuffing. WHATEVER. More mushrooms for me!

The salad bar tonight was chopped romaine, sliced cucumbers and the last of the carrots from my garden (sliced). Time to make way for the spring veggies!

What's cookin'

Hey, everyone! I know my dinner posts have been a little spotty lately, so I thought I'd list some stuff I've been making that I haven't had a chance to tell you about.

Cold Boiled Shrimp
This is the girl child's favorite way to eat shrimp, and it really could not be easier to make. I buy shrimp with the shells already split down the back and the mud veins removed, but it's pretty easy to do that yourself with a pair of kitchen shears. Bring a big pot of water to a boil with a couple of tablespoons (or more, if you like it spicy) of crab/shrimp-boil seasoning. You can buy this already made, which is what I do, or mix up your own blend of spices, which is what I keep telling myself I'll do one of these days.

Give your shrimp a good rinse in the sink and then, once the water on the stove is at a full boil, CAREFULLY add the shrimp. It only takes a couple of minutes for them to cook. As soon as they curl up, fish them out with a slotted spoon and dump them directly into a big bowl of ice. This will stop them from cooking any further and getting rubbery, plus make them easier to peel. And spicy, cold shrimp is soooo good on a hot day! I like to dip mine in a little melted butter with some hot sauce mixed in, but you could go the cocktail sauce route or whatever. Yum!

Spiced carrots
I made these the other night while DH was grilling steaks. I had a gorgeous bunch of organic carrots (with the tops still attached! love that!) and ended up using the whole bunch for this -- about 8-10 carrots -- because they were kind of small. But you know, adjust the amount however you like. All I did was peel them, cut them into 3/4-inch chunks, stick them in a bowl and steam them in the microwave until they were crisp-tender.

While the carrots were nuking, I bashed up a couple of teaspoons each of whole coriander and cumin seeds with my mortar and pestle. Then I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat, added the spices and stirred them around for a bit before dumping in the steamed carrots and tossing them to coat. Season with salt and pepper and you're done! These were really yummy with the grilled steaks (and baked potatoes, which the kids DEVOURED after claiming not to like baked potatoes. go figure!).

Coconut milk ice cream
We bought an ice cream maker this summer and I had resolved my lactose-intolerant self to a summer full of TEENSY dabs of homemade goodness, with the occasional fruit sorbet (boring!), when I learned there was such a thing as ice cream made with coconut milk. I was hesitant to try it because my past experience with non-dairy ice creams has NOT been good (ice milk, Rice Dream, bleargh!). But the one VERY expensive pint of coconut milk ice cream I purchased at the store was good, so off I went to Google to find some recipes for the homemade version.

I didn't find all that many, really, but I did find one for chocolate coconut milk ice cream over at The Nourishing Gourmet that sounded fabulous and really easy. AND it was sweetened with my new best friend, agave nectar! So I whipped up a batch of it and OH DUDES. It was seriously the best ice cream I've ever eaten IN MY LIFE. A monster was born in that moment, because I figured that with a base of coconut milk and agave, the possibilities were ENDLESS. And so far they have proven to be!

So yeah, I have been making a LOT of coconut milk ice cream this summer! My machine only makes one quart at a time so I use one can of organic coconut milk (NOT the "lite" variety) and three tablespoons of agave nectar and go from there. For a simple vanilla ice cream, I just add one teaspoon of vanilla to the above ingredients. For a kick-ass strawberry ice cream, I add the vanilla plus a bunch of fresh strawberries (you could use frozen, but thaw them first) and whizz the whole thing up in the blender before adding to the machine. My next experiment will be strawberry chocolate chip (or chunk).

This ice cream is sooooo rich and creamy, you'd never know it was non-dairy (and hello, IT'S VEGAN). Some flavors do retain a bit of coconut taste, but others don't really taste of coconut all that much. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it, I dunno. Anyway, DELISH! Thank you, Nourishing Gourmet! (And OMG, you all have GOT to check out her blog. It's full of fantastic whole-food recipes and tips!)

Homemade "magic shell" for the ice cream!
My kids are flat-out ADDICTED to that hard shell/magic shell ice cream topping. You know, the stuff that starts out as a liquid and gets hard (behave, children) when you pour it over ice cream? It's pretty expensive for a teeny little bottle of it, not to mention it's full of crappy ingredients, and after purchasing a new bottle pretty much every week for a couple of months solid I figured there HAD to be a better way.

Google came to my rescue once again, when I found this recipe for a homemade version over at The Accidental Vegetarian. Dudes, it's just coconut oil (I used unfiltered, organic) and chocolate chips! Melt it in a pan or the microwave, cool it, and pour it into a squeeze bottle! I have no idea how long it keeps because we're mowing through it at a rapid pace, but you don't have to refrigerate it or anything (which is good, because it would turn solid). It tastes and works EXACTLY like the stuff you buy, but it's healthier and way cheaper.

So yeah, I am topping my VEGAN ice cream with VEGAN magic shell over here. Right after a nice big steak dinner. Heh. (Sorry, vegans. I have a condition!)


Well, that's all I can come up with for now. My kids are back in school which gives me a little more free time to blog, and our CSA is off its one-week hiatus, so look for more dinners and whatnot coming soon. I'm also working on a FAQ, finally, so stay tuned for that!

Za'atar bread = yummy

Tonight's Menu

• grilled marinated shrimp
  
• za'atar bread
  
• green salad "bar"

Okay, well this was just plain tasty! A perfect end-of-summer meal.

The shrimp was the usual. So yummy. I've finally figured out how to tweak this recipe to our liking -- use ACTUAL tomato paste instead of my usual substitution of ketchup (the ketchup makes it too salty), the full amount of KOSHER salt (not sea salt), half the hot sauce, and put my grill burners on LOW, not MEDIUM-LOW. The skewers are messy to assemble but it's SO worth it, y'all.

I have to tell a story about the za'atar bread. The girl and I were at World Market the other day and I was browsing the spices (looking for whole cumin seeds, if you must know) when I saw a packet of za'atar spice. For some reason that pinged something in my brain -- I KNEW I had read a recipe recently that sounded really good and featured za'atar, but I couldn't remember what the recipe was for. The spice packet was only a couple of bucks so I bought it anyway and brought it home, and then I remembered that the recipe was from my beloved bread book. (I don't have a deal going with the authors of this book, I swear. I've just been using it A LOT and really loving it.)

ANYWAY, the za'atar bread was really easy to make -- it's a flat bread that's similar in concept to a focaccia, only sprinkled with za'atar spice instead of fresh herbs and onion (or whatever you like on YOUR focaccia). I made it with the olive oil dough from the book and it came out so flavorful and tender and delicious! DH has requested that I make this bread again, and often (and hello, OMG, my picky DH ate something kind of exotic AND LIKED IT!) so I'd better head back to World Market and stock up!

I think I've managed to work through my salad boredom. Tonight's salad was torn green leaf lettuce (I tried that romaine thing you all suggested but the kids wouldn't touch that either! curses!) with sliced red onion, shredded carrots and tomato wedges. So far, so good on my plan to avoid pre-bagged salad greens! I'm sure I'll have an even easier time of it when greens are actually in season, argh.

Scallops!

Tonight's Menu

• bay scallops with bacon and spinach
  

This was kind of an experiment, y'all. I think it worked out okay, but there are a few things I'd do differently if I made it again.

All I did was take about 4-5 thick slices of bacon (I used Pederson's Apple Smoked) and chop them up, then stick them in a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat until the fat had rendered out and they were about 90% on their way to being crispy. Then I dumped in a pound of bay scallops (those are the little teeny ones) that had been rinsed and blotted dry. When I make this again I will do the scallops in BATCHES, because the idea was for them to get a nice sear, and in reality they just kind of simmered in their own juices. Oh well. I tossed them around for 3-4 minutes until they'd gone opaque, seasoned with salt and pepper, then removed the bacon and scallops from the pan with a slotted spoon.

With the pan still hot, I dumped in a pound of fresh baby spinach and let it wilt down. When it was nearly done, I sprinkled in a couple of teaspoons of sugar and an equal amount of red wine vinegar and tossed the spinach around to mix it all together, then seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper. The combo of sugar and vinegar gives a really nice, slightly sweet and sour flavor to the spinach and works especially well with the bacon fat still left in the pan.

To serve, just make a nice bed of spinach on the plate and spoon the scallops and bacon over top. This was really tasty -- the flavors were all there -- but like I said, I'd do the scallops in batches next time so they'd sear instead of simmering. By some miracle I managed NOT to overcook them, so they weren't rubbery, but the texture wasn't quite what I was going for. Or maybe sea scallops would be better, cooked a few at a time? Hmmm. Must experiment!

Soft things

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed tilapia fillets
  
• buttered egg noodles
  
• steamed broccoli
  

The boy child had four primary molars pulled Wednesday in anticipation of braces, and he's been eating nothing but pudding, applesauce, Jello and the occasional bowl of overcooked pasta ever since, poor kid! I wanted to cook a dinner he could actually EAT that contained a bit of protein and veggie. This worked out great and he was happy to get some real food in his tummy. Who knew a 12 year old could get tired of pudding and ice cream?!

This was also a super easy dinner to make. I just seasoned some tilapia fillets with salt and pepper and sauteed them in a skillet with EVOO -- done! The egg noodles were from a package, just boiled until done and then drained and tossed with some butter. Broccoli was steamed in the microwave. I cooked everything a little longer than usual to yield a softer texture for the boy, but nothing was mushy. Hooray for easy, nutritious, AND soft on the gums!

Fish tacos

Tonight's Menu

• fish tacos, deconstructed or not according to taste
  

Okay, so here's the deal. I made panko-breaded tilapia in the usual way, and also coleslaw (ditto). Then I warmed some flour tortillas in the microwave and set out a bowl of shredded cheese. Diners had the option of filling their tortillas with crispy fish fillets, cheese and coleslaw, or eating any combination of those items separately.

I was surprised to see the kids really going for it, loading up their tacos! The girl ended up not liking hers and took it apart to eat piece-by-piece. The boy opted for just a fish and cheese taco with coleslaw on the side, and didn't eat much, but he's been sick for the past few days so he doesn't have much of an appetite anyway.

I, of course, thought they were delicious.

Eating locally (at least partially)

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed tilapia fillets
  
• red quinoa
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, this was pretty easy. The tilapia fillets were just seasoned with salt and pepper and sauteed in a pan with EVOO. My family has come to prefer the panko-breaded version but it was a long day and I couldn't be arsed. The sauteed version is delicious too, so bite me. (Did I mention it was a long day? Yeah. A REALLY long day.)

The red quinoa is Ancient Harvest brand. It's supposed to be just like regular quinoa, I think, but it tastes different to me and has a slightly different texture (crunchier and a wee bit bitter, to my palate). Frankly, I prefer the traditional ("blonde") version. But this one was okay, too. I tossed my individual portion with a bit of EVOO, salt and pepper and that made it a bit more palatable.

Tonight's salad bar was quite an exciting affair, owing to the fact that we picked up our first CSA share today! I've been wanting to get involved with a CSA for ages, but most of the ones in my area have long waiting lists and/or no distribution points that are convenient to my house (I mean, saving fuel IS part of the point, right?). We finally found one with no waiting list and a relatively close pickup point, so YAY! Fresh, local, organic produce! Can you tell I'm excited about this? (Incidentally, if you're in the Austin area and want the scoop on this particular CSA, feel free to email me at makeyourowndinner AT gmail DOT com.)

Anyway, so tonight's salad bar was mixed salad greens (from the CSA) and diced raw kohlrabi (ditto), along with cucumber, baby carrots, and mixed cherry/pear tomatoes, all of which were from the supermarket. It won't be long until we have lettuce and veggies from our own backyard salad garden, though! Hooray for spring!

Another (delicious!) take on cabbage

Tonight's Menu

• sauteed rainbow trout fillets
  
• mixed-grain rice
  
• savoy cabbage with bacon and mustard
  

Yes, I know. I'm talking about cabbage again. But hey! Don't run away! This time there was BACON!

All I did was lop off about half a head of savoy cabbage and cut it into 1-inch wide strips (more or less). Then I chopped up a few thick strips of bacon and cooked them in a large skillet until they were not quite crisp and had rendered out quite a bit of fat. I tossed in the cabbage, stirring until it had wilted down a bit and the bacon had crisped up. I ended up having not QUITE enough bacon fat to really wilt down the cabbage, so I added just a few tablespoons of water to get some braising/steaming action happening. When the cabbage was tender, I stirred in a teensy amount of stone-ground mustard (like maybe half a teaspoon) and some freshly ground pepper. I didn't add salt because both the bacon and mustard were salty.

This was absolutely DELICIOUS, I am not kidding. You couldn't really taste the mustard at all, but it gave the dish a nice depth and provided some acidity to balance out the richness of the bacon. The crinkly texture of the savoy cabbage (as opposed to my usual plain green cabbage) was a perfect vehicle for the crunchy mustard seeds and crispy bits of bacon. SO GOOD! I will make it this way again for sure.

The trout fillets were just seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper, then sauteed in a large skillet with some EVOO (that's extra virgin olive oil, for those who don't know). I started them skin-side down and then flipped them halfway through. They really only take about five minutes total, if that.

The grain thing was something new. My favorite skincare company, DHC, also sells a few high-end food items and when I placed my last order for moisturizer I decided to give the multi-grain rice a try. It was kind of a pain, actually -- you have to soak it for 30 minutes, then cook it for 15. Not all of the water got absorbed so I let it sit, covered, for a while and then ended up draining it. It was actually really good, though! It has barley and rye berries in addition to a couple of different types of rice, and it has a lot more flavor and texture than plain rice. With a little salt and pepper, it makes a really tasty side dish. DH even liked it, and the boy had multiple helpings!

It was SO cold and windy and nasty today, but I'm hoping this is winter's last hurrah. I have a bunch more GRILLING to do, yo! Stay tuned!

Eat your heart out, Jamie Oliver

Tonight's Menu

• herb and lemon roasted coro coro fillets
  
• chuffed potatoes
  
• green salad "bar"
  

So here's what happened: while at my local sucky supermarket buying tilapia, I saw that they had this relatively inexpensive fish called coro coro. I had never heard of it before, but it was cheap-ish and I was up for an adventure, so what the heck?

I had no idea what to do with it, but it appeared relatively meaty and had the skin still on, so I decided to roast it a la Jamie Oliver. First I slashed the skin with a knife and sprinkled both sides with salt and pepper. Then I cut two lemons into quarters, squeezed a bit of juice into my giant mortar, added some EVOO and sprigs of fresh thyme, rosemary and oregano, and bashed away at them. I fished out the larger sprigs that were still intact and layered them along with the lemon quarters (including the ones I'd already squeezed) in the bottom of a shallow baking pan, then I rubbed the leftover herby oil all over the fillets and placed them skin side up on top of the lemons/herbs. Then I roasted them in the oven at 450 degrees F for about 13 minutes or so (they were fairly thick -- a good rule of thumb is 10 minutes per inch of thickness). After they came out of the oven, I grabbed a lemon wedge with tongs and squeezed it on the fish again. This came out really good! If anything, it could have used even MORE herbs. Next time I will really go nuts, and maybe throw in some capers or something.

The potatoes were the usual, small red-skinned potatoes parboiled until tender and then tossed around in a hot pan with some butter.

The salad bar tonight was stocked with mixed lettuces, sliced cucumber, sliced carrots, and grape tomatoes. Yum!

We were in kind of a hurry tonight (the boy was participating in his school spelling bee this evening -- he took 12th place! woo!) and this was actually relatively quick, believe it or not!

Enough with the spices?

Tonight's Menu

• tilapia
• spaghetti squash
  
• green salad "bar"
  

A couple of months ago, as you may recall, I discovered (ha! kind of like how Columbus "discovered" America) a recipe for spaghetti squash with Moroccan spices, and that became my favorite way to cook not only spaghetti squash, but tilapia as well. I loved it SO much, in fact, that it became my go-to tilapia meal and I haven't made tilapia or spaghetti squash any other way since.

Well, my family has gently indicated that they'd be a-OK with me giving the Moroccan spices a bit of a rest, so tonight I went a different (more boring, but still yummy) route.

The tilapia was simply seasoned with salt and freshly ground pepper, then sauteed in a skillet with EVOO. The girl child blew my mind by actually trying some -- she still only eats maybe 20% of the dinners I make -- and she said it tasted a bit like white meat chicken. But she only ate a piece the size of a dime, and then didn't want any more. WHATEVER. The boy loved it.

I did the spaghetti squash in the microwave this time (as indicated in the Epicurious recipe linked above), mostly due to a lack of advance planning on my part because it takes a while to do in the oven. It came out fine, and after I shredded it into a bowl, I added a knob of butter, some salt and freshly ground pepper, and topped it with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Yes, the real $tuff -- I splurged on a little hunk over the holidays. This was really yummy even without all the spices. I GUESS. (No, it was, really!)

Our salad bar this evening featured mixed lettuces (I dunno, I buy them in the package already mixed), sliced cucumbers, sliced baby carrots and chopped snow peas.

Shrimps on sticks!

Tonight's Menu

• stovetop-grilled shrimp on rosemary skewers
• quinoa
  
• spinach salad (sort of)
  

Oh, internets! I have neglected you horribly these past couple of months, I know. And I'm REALLY REALLY sorry. Blame it on The Pre-Holiday Slump That Almost Ate My Brain. But hey, it's January now, and my brain and I are back! And we are COOKING, bitches!

Okay, so the shrimp! This was kind of an experiment. What I did was cut some branches of rosemary (old/firm branches, not young/bendy ones) from the bushes out front, strip them of leaves to about an inch or so from the tip, then cut the ends (opposite the tips, yo) on an angle so they were fairly sharp. Then I cleaned about a pound of large-ish shrimp and threaded them onto the branches, alternating which direction the tails were facing (they lay a little more flat on the grill that way). I would have liked to brush them with something yummy at this point, but with the girl being allergic to soy and both kids complaining of itchy throats every time they eat garlic lately (please God, do not let my children be allergic to garlic on top of everything else), I gave up and just brushed them with EVOO.

Then I got my beloved IKEA grill pan screaming hot, and this is where the fun began, because the shrimps weren't making good contact with the grill. Since the grill pan isn't covered (because hello, it's a GRILL PAN), they were in danger of not getting cooked through or of getting burned/tough on the outside in order to be done in the middle. SO, after flipping them (I gave them maybe 2 - 3 minutes per side) I covered the pan with a cookie sheet for about a minute. This allowed them to get grilled as normal on the second side while still cooking through. As an added bonus, the leaves on the tips of the skewers were making contact just fine and were smoking a bit as a result, so covering the pan gave the shrimp a mini rosemary smoke infusion that really boosted the flavor. I cut wedges of lemon for folks to squeeze themselves and hardly missed the garlic at all (sniff!).

We've talked about how to cook quinoa (pronounced keen-wah), right? Just put a cup of it in a pan along with two cups of water (like for rice), bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. Then take it off the heat and just let it sit, covered, for five minutes or so before tossing with a fork to fluff it up. I always stir in a little salt and pepper before serving, but you can also go whole-hog and make a sort of pilaf with sauteed veggies (we just had it plain last night). This is a really great substitute for rice, particularly white rice, because it's a whole grain but doesn't have that sometimes unpleasant texture of brown rice (or whole-wheat pasta, shudder!).

Finally, the spinach salad. I say it was sort of a spinach salad because lately the boy child has requested that all our salads be served in "bar" fashion. In other words, a big bowl of greens with lots of little bowls of veggies or whatever surrounding it, so folks can mix their own. I thought this was a swell idea so that's what we've been doing. Last night it was a bowl of baby spinach with canned mandarin orange segments on the side. Dried cranberries and toasted nuts are great options, too, but we didn't have any.

Okay! So! Back to the kitchen!

Grilling again, hooray!

Tonight's Menu

• barbecued shrimp
  
• grilled apricots with mint
• a salad of new potatoes, cherry tomatoes (from the garden!), mozzarella, marinated artichoke hearts and basil
• sliced tomatoes (from the garden!)
  

It FINALLY quit raining down here so I was able to grill again. Yay!

Okay, for the shrimp I just cleaned and shelled (down to the tails) a bunch of biggish shrimp and stuck them on bamboo skewers (which I soaked in water, but they burned anyway). Then I combined some bottled barbecue sauce with some apricot fruit spread and a wee tot of bourbon and brushed that mixture on the shrimp while they were grilling (about 6 minutes total over high heat). Yum!

The apricots were dead easy -- I just halved some fresh apricots, removed the pits, and grilled them cut-side down for about five minutes. Then I gave them a rough chop and tossed them with a bit of superfine sugar and some chopped fresh mint. Yum, again!

The salad was my usual favorite summer salad. Way yummy.

We are DROWNING in tomatoes but I am not complaining! Is there anything better than a tomato right off the vine, sliced and salted and wolfed down with abandon? I think not.

In other news, the sidecar is the official cocktail of Make Your Own Damn Dinner, Summer 2007! Sunshine in a glass, people!

Surf & Turf! Kind of!

Tonight's Menu

• leftover citrus grilled shrimp from last night
• leftover garlicky grilled flank steak from the night before
• a warm salad of green beans and cherry tomatoes FROM THE GARDEN!
  
• leftover spinach salad with oranges and toasted almonds

Okay, so "embellished leftovers" would be a more appropriate title. Sue me.

I had a teeny number of green beans from the garden (I've been saving them up in a ziploc bag in the fridge for the past week) and wanted to do something with them. I also had about six cherry tomatoes, also from the garden, that were languishing on my kitchen windowsill. So hey! Warm salad!

I simmered the beans in water until they were just tender, then drained them and dumped them in a bowl with halved cherry tomatoes. Then I took a TEENY bit of garlic, like half a clove, and minced it. I tossed the garlic into a skillet and added a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar along with an equal amount of sugar (which was a bit too much sugar, unfortunately) and let it reduce down a bit. (NOTE: I actually had to do all the above steps twice, because the first time, the pan was too hot and the sugar burned. Yuck.) Then I removed it from the heat and whisked in a little bit of EVOO (really fast, so it would emulsify) and drizzled this concoction over the beans and tomatoes. Add a chiffonade of fresh basil (from the HERB garden!), season with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.

It was really good, but like I said, just a TAD too sweet. Next time, less sugar! I put some of the dressing/sauce on my spinach salad as well and that was AWESOME. Made me wonder what it would be like if I added just a bit of orange juice next time? And cut way back on the sugar? Hmm. I smell a kitchen experiment!

Father's Day dinner

Tonight's Menu

• citrus grilled shrimp
  
• HUGE spinach salad with oranges and toasted almonds
  

In addition to blueberry muffins for breakfast, DH requested "seafood" for dinner tonight. He didn't give me many guidelines beyond that, but I happened to spy some nice big gulf shrimp for a decent price at the grocery store, so grilled shrimp it was!

I made a little marinade for the shrimp with pineapple juice, fresh-squeezed orange juice and fresh lime juice. I also tossed in a smashed garlic clove and a sprig of fresh rosemary, along with a smidge of EVOO. Then I marinated the shrimp (after peeling them down to the tails and de-veining) for about an hour before grilling them for 3-4 minutes per side on a grill screen over high heat. They were really yummy -- citrusy with a hint of sweetness, and a bit of bite from the garlic and rosemary (which didn't overpower since I tossed them in whole).

The salad was just baby spinach tossed with fresh orange sections and slivered, blanched almonds that had been toasted in a dry skillet and allowed to cool (so as not to wilt the spinach).

We washed it all down with one of DH's favorite cocktails, the pina colada! Yeah, he likes the girly drinks. You got a problem with that?

Cold supper

Tonight's Menu

• cold boiled shrimp
  
• marinated salad of red potatoes, mozzarella, tomatoes and artichoke hearts with basil
  
• fresh green salad
  

It's HOT, y'all.

The shrimp were boiled in the shell w/spices, put on ice to chill, then we peeled 'em and ate 'em at the table.

The potato salad is my usual favorite.

I had ONE homegrown cherry tomato in my green salad -- the first one to come ripe from the tomato plants in my garden. There are a TON of green tomatoes out there right now and I am giddy with anticipation!

Gumbo!

Okay, so this was weird: yesterday at my sucky supermarket I picked up, totally on a WHIM, the makings for seafood gumbo. I didn't want to make it yesterday because we had just had fish the day before, so I decided that tonight would be Gumbo Night. And then this morning, I opened up the paper to find that the food section was doing a HUGE article on guess what? Gumbo! I KNOW! I swear to you all, I was planning this before I ever saw that. I WAS! Shut up!

Anyhoodle, I do not by any means claim that my gumbo is the be all, end all of gumbo recipes. I have no ego invested in this crappe, y'all. I just know mine tastes good, and that's all I care about. So here's how I made it tonight, and keep in mind a lot of my cooking technique has to do with the fact that I have a teeny little stockpot and not a nice big one.

And you know what? I'm not even going to do this as a recipe. Because I didn't really bother to measure anything. Sorry about that. Hopefully if you REALLY want to make it the way I did, you can figure it out from the following.

Okay. So I took half a stick of butter (that would be 1/4 cup) and melted it over medium high heat, then I dumped in half a cup of flour. Which was too much, so I added a little olive oil to loosen it up. I stirred the hell out of it forever until it took on a color somewhere between butterscotch and caramel. I lack confidence in making a dark roux. I'm afraid I'll burn it. So, light-medium roux it was.

Then I added 1 medium chopped onion, two chopped celery sticks, one small chopped green bell pepper, one-half chopped yellow bell pepper, and three large-ish chopped garlic cloves. Stir, stir, stir. Then I dumped in 12 ounces of chopped andouille sausage. Stir, stir, stir. Then I stirred in two cans of vegetable broth, some oregano, some thyme, some freshly ground pepper and two bay leaves. Bring to a gentle boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes or so. You want the veggies tender. No crisp-tender in gumbo, yo!

About 15 minutes before serving, I stirred in about a cup of sliced okra. I used frozen which I thawed in the microwave before adding to the gumbo. You could use fresh, but you'd want to add it a little earlier in the cooking process.

Five minutes before serving, I stirred in a small can of crab claw meat (you could use lump or jumbo lump but it's WAY more expensive) and a pound of peeled raw shrimp. As soon as the shrimp curls, take it off the heat and remove the bay leaves. You're now ready to serve this puppy up over rice.

It's so damn good, y'all. Seriously. This made a ton so I froze some of it for a day when we're in need of comfort food.

Go forth and gumbo, y'all!