Oven goodness

Tonight's Menu

• oven-cooked beef brisket
  
• baked potatoes
  
• coleslaw
  

This was a really easy dinner. With just a bit of prep up-front, this will cook all day with no interference from you. You can even make the coleslaw the day before!

For the brisket, I made a dry rub of brown sugar, chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, ground cumin, dried oregano, salt & pepper and rubbed that on both sides of the meat. Then I sort of improvised a roasting rack by putting crumpled balls of tin foil in the bottom of a roasting pan and laying the meat, fat side up, on top of that. I poured a bit of water into the pan (around, but not on top of, the brisket), then covered it tightly with foil and put it into a 225 degree oven for about five hours. That's it! All you have to do is take it out of the oven, let it rest for about 10 minutes, then slice it thinly against the grain and serve. Easy!

The potatoes were likewise easy -- they were wrapped in foil and baked alongside the roasting pan for the last 3 hours of cooking time. I put out butter, shredded cheese, sour cream and chopped cooked bacon so everyone could fix their own potato however they liked it.

I would have served some freezer pickles along with this meal but I forgot to take them out of the freezer ahead of time. D'oh!

Rushing the season

Tonight's Menu

• pork chops with apples & onions in a cider mustard cream sauce
  
• mashed potatoes
  
• sauteed cabbage with bacon
  

Oh people, it's not even quite September yet and I am SO ready for fall! I can't help it; it's been a loooong summer here in central Texas. I was in the mood for fall food tonight, and nothing says fall to me like pork, apples and cabbage.

So, the pork! I had some really large but thin bone-in chops that I just seasoned with salt and pepper and then browned on both sides in a heavy skillet with a little bit of oil. I removed the chops to a plate and covered them with foil to keep warm, then dumped half a Granny Smith apple (peeled and sliced relatively thin) and half a sweet yellow onion (also sliced thin, lengthwise) into the skillet. I tossed them around to pick up some color, then briefly removed the pan from the heat so I could pour in about 10 ounces of hard cider. (You could also use regular non-alcoholic apple cider, in which case there's no danger of a flareup and thus no need to take the pan off the heat.)

I put the pan back on the heat and left it to simmer away, uncovered, until the onions and apples were tender and the cider had evaporated by about half. Then I stirred in one tablespoon of whole-grain mustard (because I like the seeds) and slowly added about half a cup of heavy cream. I let it bubble away for just a minute before taking it off the heat.

The idea is to serve the apple-onion sauce over the chops, but I put it on the side because I knew the kids would never eat it that way. And yes, they are still free to Make (Their) Own Damn Dinner(s) if they don't like what I'm serving, but they both DO like pork chops and it's no skin off my nose to put the sauce on the side.

The mashed potatoes were my usual frozen Ore-Ida, jazzed up with milk, butter, salt and pepper. I KNOW! But for a processed food this one doesn't contain too much scary crap, and I just HATE making mashed potatoes from scratch.

For the cabbage, I just browned off some chopped bacon in a skillet and then dumped in a bunch of chopped cabbage. Stir, stir, stir until the cabbage is tender, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Easy!

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!

Plan B sausages

Tonight's Menu

• mild Italian sausages with onions
• buttered noodles
  
• green salad "bar"

We had kind of a crazy dinnertime tonight, y'all. The girl child has been doing a theater camp all summer and tonight was their performance, with a dress rehearsal beforehand. So she wasn't home for dinner, and the rest of us had to wolf ours down so we could get to the show on time.

I put the sausages on the stove to simmer as usual and had planned to finish them on the grill, but while they were simmering away this freak rain/wind storm popped up from out of nowhere. We are talking black skies, wind that nearly bent our trees in half, and giant pounding raindrops. Welcome to Texas weather, y'all! Sooo, yeah, I was not going out to grill in that! Instead I browned the simmered sausages in a skillet on the stovetop (say that three times fast!) and decided to drop in a chopped onion along with them. I added just a tiny bit of EVOO to the pan because the sausages were fairly lean, and just flipped everything around for 10 minutes or so until the sausages were nice and brown and the onions were tender. Not as good as grilled, but really yummy nonetheless!

The noodles were just plain old egg noodles, cooked according to package directions and tossed with a little butter.

Tonight's salad was torn green leaf lettuce, sliced cucumbers, shredded carrots and wedged tomatoes. The boy is NOT happy about my decision to stop buying bagged lettuce. Apparently he didn't get the memo that I am no longer catering to his whims. Since, oh, about two years ago!

We DID make it to the play in time, by the way. And it was SO cute!

Pumpkin seed pesto

Tonight's Menu

• penne with pumpkin seed pesto
  
• green salad "bar"

I have a complicated relationship with basil, y'all. I love the way it tastes and I love having a supply of fresh basil in-season, but I have a horrible time growing it. I don't know what it is, but sweet basil HATES me. Whenever I plant it, either something eats it all or it dies within a week.

However, my parents bought me a plant this summer that was called Pesto Basil and I've had a great deal of success with that one, finally! It has smaller leaves than sweet basil and they're sort of variegated light green and white. I planted it in my garden instead of in a pot and it's done really well. With summer drawing to a close I've been worried about losing it all and decided that the thing to do was make pesto with it. However, as you know, the girl is allergic to tree nuts so pine nuts are out. I googled for nut-free pesto recipes and found several that featured various types of seeds instead of nuts -- why didn't I think of that?! We know she isn't allergic to pumpkin seeds (we always roast them after carving jack o' lanterns and she pretty much eats her weight in them) so I bought some raw ones in bulk and set to work.

I wasn't really measuring but here's approximately how I made it:

2 cups basil leaves
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese (NOT the stuff in the green can)
extra-virgin olive oil

Dump the first four ingredients into the food processor and whiz them until blended. Then, with the processor running, drizzle in the EVOO until the pesto is to the consistency you like. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. (I've heard it helps to cover the pesto with a layer of olive oil before storing it, so that's what I did.)

I served it with penne pasta (dried, prepared according to package directions) and it was really good! The pumpkin seeds give it a slightly different flavor from pine nuts, but the texture is the same. I used CSA garlic to make it and it was REALLY strong so I'm going to have garlic breath for a week, but it was worth it!

Tonight's salad "bar" was torn green leaf lettuce, shredded carrots, and wedged tomatoes.

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.

Strange meats

Tonight's Menu

• grilled cross-cut baby back ribs
• chips
  
• coleslaw
• sliced tomatoes
• freezer pickles

My grocery store has had some unusual cuts of meat lately. I usually go for spareribs if I'm going to do ribs, but these cross-cut baby back ribs were WAY cheap. We'd had some at a neighborhood potluck not too long ago and they were yummy, so I decided to try something different for a change.

I had purchased a locally produced molasses-garlic marinade for the ribs but upon getting it home, I discovered that soy sauce was the second ingredient on the label. Argh! DH and the girl are allergic to soy, so that meant I couldn't use it. (I have GOT to learn to read those labels a little more closely in the store! I never dreamed a molasses-garlic marinade would be soy-based. Stupid!) So I had to cobble together a marinade from what I had in the pantry/fridge. I ended up whisking together some bourbon, brown sugar, orange juice & zest, minced garlic (I actually grated a large clove on my microplane), garam masala, salt & pepper, onion powder and cayenne. I marinated the ribs in a big plastic zipper bag for about 3-4 hours.

After the ribs had marinated I grilled them over medium heat for just a couple of minutes per side to get some nice grill marks/browning on them. Then I moved them to an unlit burner for a good 45 minutes. They weren't QUITE as tender as I would have liked, but they weren't too terribly chewy, and they were super flavorful! If I made these again, I'd leave them a bit longer over the unlit burner to really render out all that fat and get them nice and tender.

Coleslaw was the usual, left over from last night when we had fish tacos.

We're still eating the freezer pickles I made a few weeks ago from the CSA cucumbers. Yum!

Pizza night

Tonight's Menu

• homemade pepperoni pizza
  

The girl told me after tonight's dinner that I'm not allowed to buy frozen pizzas from the grocery store anymore. Um. Okay, then. Fortunately, with a little advance planning, the homemade version was just as fast and easy as the frozen version.

The crust: was made with the olive oil dough from the bread book. I mixed the dough up the day before so it could sit in the fridge overnight. This was my first time working with the olive oil dough (we usually make the master recipe or European peasant dough) and it was fabulous! It made for a soft, tender, and delicious crust.

The sauce: was made from roasted tomatoes, eggplant and and garlic, pureed with a stick blender. I made this earlier in the day -- chunks of tomato and eggplant, whole garlic cloves, a bit of fresh basil and oregano, salt and pepper, a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, and lots of olive oil roasted at 300 degrees F for about two hours, stirring occasionally (do this on the weekend and it'll keep in the fridge for use during the week). I let it cool and then pureed a small amount with my stick blender, adding a bit of tomato paste and water to get it to the right consistency. The puree was NOT pretty -- hello, red and green make BROWN -- but it was delicious! And no, I did NOT tell my family they were eating eggplant. That's just between you and me, a'ight?

The toppings: since I live with a bunch of pizza traditionalists over here, I went with fairly mundane toppings -- shredded mozzarella and sliced pepperoni. That's it.

It really wasn't any trouble to assemble. While the baking stone was heating up in the oven (at 500 degrees F), I covered the pizza peel (that's the wooden paddle thing) with cornmeal, rolled out the dough on the countertop, moved it to the peel, spooned on some sauce and sprinkled on the toppings. By that time the stone was hot, so I transferred the pizza to the stone (I get a little thrill out of successfully executing that jerk-and-tug motion it takes to get the pizza off the peel and onto the stone)(though I am NOT always successful at it, I hasten to add) and baked it for 8-10 minutes. While the first pizza was baking, I made another one (we can put away A LOT of pizza over here, y'all) and stuck it in the oven when the first one came out.

There is something about pizza made with FRESH dough, y'all. I don't know. I think I agree with the girl -- we can never go back to frozen now!

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!

Chicken skin revisited

Tonight's Menu

• grilled chicken thighs
  
• herb-onion focaccia
  
• garlicky green beans
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, well this was just plain yum.

The girl and I decided that while chicken drumsticks were an iffy proposition with braces, chicken THIGHS with the bones in and skin on would probably be okay. So that's what I made. I just sprinkled them with Jane's Krazy Salt and garlic pepper as usual, grilled them skin-side down over medium-high heat until the skin was nicely browned (but not BLACK this time; I watched them pretty closely), then moved them all skin-side up to an unlit burner and left them alone for 35 minutes or so. They were crispy, juicy and delicious!

The focaccia was made with the master recipe boule dough from the book. I topped it with snipped fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, sliced red onion, EVOO, coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Yum!

The green beans were from my garden! Yay! I had thought that my Kentucky Wonder pole beans weren't setting fruit, but it turns out the vines were so freakin' dense that I just couldn't SEE any. I poked around in there yesterday and managed to harvest a good-sized handful of beans. Some of them had obviously been on there a while and looked more like broad beans that you would pop out of the pod than string beans that you would eat all in one gulp, but oh well! I cut them in 2-inch pieces and simmered them in water for a good 15 minutes to make sure they'd be tender. Then I sauteed a large minced garlic clove in some EVOO in a skillet and tossed in the beans to get them nice and garlicky. Season with salt and pepper and you're good to go! Now I just have to remember to check the bean vines more often so I can get them while they're still young and tender!

I'm trying to move away from bagged, prepared salad greens for no particular reason other than pure contrariness on my part. So tonight's salad "bar" was torn green leaf lettuce (from the store and out of season, ugh), the last of the cherry tomatoes from my garden, and the last of the sliced carrots from the CSA. The kids apparently think green leaf lettuce = poison so they didn't eat any (they had chopped raw apples instead), but DH and I thought it was worlds better than our usual salads made with packaged lettuce. Yay! Non-boring salad, for a change!

Indoor picnic

Tonight's Menu

• oven-cooked pork spare ribs
  
• chuffed potatoes
  
• coleslaw
• freezer pickles
  

We were expecting rain today courtesy of Hurricane Dolly, but not much materialized. I planned an indoor dinner just in case, though!

I bought a HUGE rack of pork spare ribs at the grocery store. These are cheaper per pound than baby back ribs, at least where I live, and I think they're tastier (probably because they have a lot more fat). I cut the rack in half so it would fit in my roasting pan, then rubbed it all over with a mixture of brown sugar, garam masala, chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper and cayenne. I put the ribs on a rack in the roasting pan, added a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, covered it tightly with heavy-duty foil and stuck it in the oven for about three hours at 300 degrees F. Then I uncovered the ribs, boosted the heat up to 425 degrees F, and let them get nice and brown for 20-30 minutes. I didn't bother basting them with sauce; just served some on the side (bottled). They were falling-apart delicious and the girl had seconds!

Chuffed potatoes were the usual, as was the coleslaw.

The freezer pickles were sort of an experiment. Our CSA has given us quite a few pickling cucumbers lately and I wasn't sure what to do with them because I have NO desire to get into the whole canning thing. My mom used to can stuff and it seemed like a huge pain in the ass. I just don't want to mess with it at all. So I tried my hand at freezer pickles instead, and it was way easy! I used the top recipe on this page for this batch of pickles. I think they're pretty darn tasty -- kind of sweet/tangy. I'll probably try a more ambitious recipe for my next batch, but if you're new to freezer pickles like I am/was, that's a pretty good recipe to get you started!

Easy dinner

Tonight's Menu

• grilled boneless pork chops
  
• grilled cabbage wedges
  
• green salad "bar"
  

This was super easy and really good, if a tad bit boring.

All I did with the pork chops was sprinkle them on both sides with Jane's Krazy Salt and some garlic pepper, then grilled them 5 minutes per side over high heat (they were a little thick -- you could knock that back a bit for thinner chops). STUPID easy, y'all.

For the cabbage, I halved a head of green cabbage lengthwise, reserving one half for coleslaw tomorrow. The other half I just cored and cut into four wedges. I brushed the cut sides with EVOO and sprinkled them with salt and pepper, then cooked them exactly the same way, and at the same time, as the pork chops. They did tend to fall apart just a little bit when I turned them, but not so much that I lost them down the grill slats or anything. This was really tasty and easy and I'd definitely make cabbage this way again!

Tonight's salad bar was mixed leaf lettuces with sliced carrots, sliced cucumbers, and wedged tomatoes. Have I mentioned that I'm getting totally BORED with the salad bar thing? The kids are still eating it so I'm still making it, but I'm also making all these awesome CSA veggies and no one is eating them but me! Argh. It's not like the salad isn't HEALTHY or anything, so I don't want to press the point, but I'm pretty much OVER green salads right now, y'all.

A farewell to chicken skin

Tonight's Menu

• herb-marinated chicken thighs
  
• toasted rice
• steamed broccoli
  

Hey, everyone! Sorry for the lack of posting. We've been busy, busy, busy over here and I've been falling back on some old standbys, meal-wise. Up until a few days ago, that is, because that's when the girl child got braces! And the boy is getting his on Friday! Yipes! Suddenly I've had to banish popcorn from the house and re-think things like corn on the cob and chicken drumsticks.

Soo, tonight's chicken was made with boneless, skinless thighs. I know, I KNOW, I always say that the skin is my favorite part of the chicken, but I'm here to tell you that these were really good even without it! All I did was dump the thighs into a big zipper bag. Then I mixed together some fresh lemon juice, EVOO, minced garlic, a TON of minced fresh herbs (flat-leaf parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme -- maybe I should call this Scarborough Fair Chicken?), kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. I dumped the herb mixture over the chicken thighs, sealed the bag, and then sort of massaged it around so that all the thighs were coated. Then I popped it into the fridge for a couple of hours before grilling the thighs over medium-high heat for about 4-5 minutes per side. They were juicy and delicious, the girl was able to eat them without breaking a wire on her braces, and we hardly missed the skin, I SWEAR!

Okay, now for the rice. The girl recently insisted that I used to make a brown rice that she absolutely loved. Well, I can only remember making brown rice maybe TWICE before, and as I recall, everyone hated the texture of it. Then I remembered that before we got our current microwave, which has a "smart" setting for rice, I used to make it on the stovetop and I would toast the rice in a bit of butter before adding the water. This gave it a golden, nutty-brown appearance, and everyone DID love it that way. So I made it again tonight to see if maybe that was the dish that the girl remembered.

All I did was melt two tablespoons of unsalted butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat (you could use salted, but I didn't have any), then add a cup of uncooked long-grain white rice and toss it around until it was lightly toasted. This doesn't take very long and you have to watch it because it'll go from toasted to burnt REALLY fast. As soon as it turns golden brown and releases a nutty aroma, add two cups of water and bring it to a boil. As soon as it boils, cover and reduce to a low simmer. Then just leave it alone for about 20 minutes before taking it off the heat and letting it sit, covered, for 5 minutes or so. Fluff with a fork, season with salt and pepper, and serve. I had forgotten how much I like rice cooked this way!

(Full disclosure: the girl said this wasn't QUITE what she remembered. She still insists it was BROWN rice. I have no memory of this whatsoever. Back to the drawing board, I guess.)

The broccoli was steamed in the microwave. I'm not cooking THAT on the stovetop unless it's in a stir-fry!

Grilled pork

Tonight's Menu

• grilled spicy pork tenderloin w/mango salsa
• roasted chili-garlic potatoes
• quinoa salad
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, this was pretty darn easy.

Tenderloin recipe is here. Mango salsa is here (except I used THREE mangoes, and a jalapeno from the CSA). Quinoa salad is right over here. The salsa and quinoa salad were made ahead of time; they'll keep for a few days in the fridge.

For the chili-garlic potatoes, all I did was cut up four LARGE red-skinned potatoes into bite-sized chunks and toss them into a baking pan. Then I drizzled on some EVOO, tossed to coat, and sprinkled them with some kosher salt, freshly ground pepper, garlic powder and chili powder. I roasted them at 475 degrees F for about 40 minutes, stirring them around every 15 minutes or so. Delicious!

Tonight's salad bar was purchased mixed lettuce, sliced carrots, sliced cucumber from the CSA, and cherry tomatoes also from the CSA (oh, the potatoes were CSA goodies, too).

Very yummy and summery!

Fajitas two ways

Tonight's Menu

• beef & chicken fajitas
  

I had never made chicken fajitas until a couple of weeks ago when my grandpa was in town. I wanted to make him a quintessentially Texan meal, and fajitas are pretty much it. I usually make beef fajitas since DH is allergic to poultry, but grandpa doesn't eat beef! So I made both beef and chicken, and the kids and I loved the chicken version so much that I decided I'd make both from now on.

Instructions for the beef fajitas are here.

The chicken fajitas are pretty darn similar. I buy boneless, skinless chicken thighs (you could do breasts, but the thighs have WAY more flavor), lay them between two pieces of wax paper, and pound the heck out of them with the edge of a small plate. I know, it sounds weird, but it manages to tenderize and flatten the thighs so that they'll take the marinade a little better and also cook really fast. Then I sprinkle them with a pre-made chicken fajita seasoning blend (I use HEB's store brand spice mixes for both the chicken and the beef fajitas, for those of you in HEB country) and press it in a bit just to make sure it sticks. Then I mix the juice of one lime and about half an orange with some EVOO, pop the thighs into a zipper bag, and pour the juice/oil mixture over top. Press the air out of the bag and seal it, then stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours. To grill, just pop them over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes per side or until done (if you haven't pounded them pretty flat, it'll take a little longer). Then just slice them into strips and serve 'em up with warm flour tortillas, grilled onions & bell peppers, shredded cheese, sliced avocado, sour cream and hot sauce!

Notes for next year's potluck

So hey, everyone! I hope all of my fellow Americans had a good Fourth of July yesterday. We went to our neighborhood potluck, as usual. I've been told not to show up without my extremely fattening potato salad, so I made that, but I had cut down the recipe because fewer people than usual were expected and that tiny little bowl of potato salad looked ... lonely, somehow. Sooo, I also made some zucchini bread and quinoa salad!

I followed the zucchini bread recipe I found here, except that I left out the nuts (DH and the girl are allergic to tree nuts) and added just a bit of grated orange zest to the batter. Oh my GOD, y'all! This is some damn good zucchini bread! It's almost more of a spice cake than a bread because it has a really fine, cake-like texture. The boy child is flat-out addicted so it's a good thing this recipe made two loaves (we only took one to the potluck). I will have a freezer full of this stuff before zucchini season is over, mark my words!

I totally winged it with the quinoa salad and it turned out to be the sleeper hit of the potluck. Go figure! I was afraid nobody would want to touch it, but I haven't gotten that many raves over a dish since ... er, the first time I showed up with that fattening potato salad, probably. I wasn't measuring but here's approximately how I made it.

I had some plain, unseasoned, cooked quinoa leftover from dinner the night before -- I'd guess it was maybe a cup and a half, cooked. So I dumped that in a bowl. Then I took a large-ish cucumber, peeled it, cut it in half lengthwise and scraped out the seeds with a spoon before chopping it into a relatively small-ish dice (not a PERFECT dice -- you know me -- but I was going for more or less uniform pieces). I dumped that into the quinoa along with about 1/4 cup chopped (small, again) red onion and 2-3 sliced scallions, green tips included. I had some colorful bell peppers (yellow and orange) in the crisper so I diced up just a bit of those for color (like maybe 1/4 of each pepper -- not much) and tossed them in. Then I went out to the herb patch and snipped a handful of basil, flat-leaf parsley and mint, brought it inside, washed and chopped it and tossed it into the bowl with everything else. Finally I seasoned it with salt and pepper, then shook some fresh lemon juice (NOT bottled) and EVOO in a jar and poured it over, tossing the quinoa mixture to coat. There was only a small amount of dressing -- not enough for it to pool up in the bottom of the bowl or anything. I just wanted to moisten and loosen everything up a bit while giving it a hint of that bright lemon juice flavor.

This was SO GOOD! Seriously, everyone raved about it (and asked what the heck quinoa was, and where they could buy it, and how to cook it...). There were no leftovers so I am going to have to make another batch just for me. This would make a fantastic lunch -- quinoa is really high in protein, and when you add in all the veggies, that's a complete meal as far as I'm concerned!

Of course, now I'm stuck bringing both the potato salad AND the quinoa salad to every neighborhood potluck henceforth (and probably the zucchini bread, too) but I don't mind.

Skillet yummies

Tonight's Menu

• grilled Italian sausages
  
• okra & corn with bacon & onions
• sliced tomatoes

Gah. CSA pickup was on Wednesday, but since then we've been eating out more often than not (which is unusual for us) and I'm starting to FREAK OUT that all these delicious veggies will go bad before I can use them. I have CSA STRESS, y'all.

First let's talk about the sausages, which were pretty much the usual deal. Mild, fresh Italian sausages simmered in water for 10-15 minutes, then browned off on the grill. Super easy.

I've been drooling over the idea of okra with bacon ever since a recent post about it by my fabulous foodie pal Jaye. I had a couple of cobs of already-cooked corn left over from a recent dinner (Friday night fajitas) and corn usually plays nicely with okra so I decided to kill two birds, as it were. All I did was chop up a few slices of good bacon (Pederson's apple-smoked, in this case) along with about 1/4 of a sweet yellow onion. Then I sliced up a bunch of fresh okra from the CSA and sliced my already-cooked corn off the cob. I tossed the bacon into a skillet and once it had gone about half-crisp, I added the onions. Stir, stir, stir until the onions start to go translucent, then add the okra. Stir, stir, stir until the okra gets tender, then add in the corn and just toss around a bit to warm it through (and let it pick up a bit of color, if you like). Then just season with salt and pepper and Bob's your uncle!

EVERYONE loved this. The boy scarfed his down, and the girl actually TRIED it and thought it was pretty darn good. Holy crap, y'all, my kids ate okra!

Tomatoes were from the CSA. I have GOT to use these up; they are almost over-ripe after a few days on the windowsill.

An old favorite

Tonight's Menu

• shrimp & spaghetti squash with Moroccan spices
  
• green salad "bar"
  

The boy child was very excited to see that we got a nice, big spaghetti squash in our CSA box this week and he immediately asked if I would make it his favorite way. Um, what? My 12 year old has a favorite spaghetti squash recipe? WHO KNEW?

With a bit of discussion I figured out that he was talking about this recipe from Epicurious, which I'd made several times in the past and had completely forgotten about. One of my favorite meals way-back-when was to make this recipe as directed except that I would prepare the spiced butter in a heavy skillet instead of a saucepan. Then, after dumping the butter mixture onto the squash, I'd use that same skillet to saute some tilapia fillets. This time I did it with peeled, de-veined shrimp and it was every bit as delicious! Guess I'll have to put this recipe back into rotation!

The salad was the same as usual. Ugh.

Pasta!

Tonight's Menu

• farfalle with roasted tomatoes
  
• peasant bread
  
• green salad "bar"
  

We eat pasta at least once a week around here but I don't usually post about it because, well, it's boring. But tonight's pasta was anything but!

It was CSA pickup day again and we got loads of tomatoes. Up to now some of the tomatoes in the CSA boxes have been not quite ripe, which allowed us to put them on the windowsills and then forget about them for a few days while they ripened up. However, all of today's tomatoes were perfectly ripe, which means I need to use them FAST since I'm not into canning or preserving or any of that stuff (might have to GET into it though, if this keeps up).

Sooo, all I did was follow this recipe for roasting them with garlic, basil and balsamic vinegar, then I served the resulting delicious melange over farfalle (aka bow-tie pasta). It was SO yummy, y'all. This time I refrained from tarting it up with any eggplant or zucchini (though we got bunches of both in today's box).

The bread was from the book. I SWEAR I will post a review of this soon. A few people have emailed me with questions and I will try to get those answers out this week, I promise!

The salad was the exact same one we've been eating for the past week, but with fresh ingredients. I'm getting a little bored with salad, frankly, but the kids are always happy to eat it so it's a painless way to get veggies into them. Sigh.

Garlicky pork

Tonight's Menu

• grilled garlicky pork tenderloin
  
• grilled zucchini
  
• green salad "bar"
  

Okay, this was really easy.

For the pork, I got out my giant mortar and pestle and bashed up three garlic cloves, a couple of teaspoons of kosher salt (might have been closer to a tablespoon; I wasn't measuring), a tiny bunch of fresh oregano from the herb garden, the juice of one lemon, and a couple of tablespoons of EVOO (equal to the amount of lemon juice, more or less) until it formed a slurry. Then I stuck a pork tenderloin in a plastic zipper bag, poured the garlic slurry on top, smooshed it around to coat the pork, and stuck it in the fridge for about 5 hours. Then I grilled it over medium-high heat for a total of 20 minutes, turning every 5 minutes or so to get all the sides in contact with the grill. Tent with foil and rest for 5 minutes or so, cut into half-inch slices on the diagonal, and enjoy!

This was the last of the CSA zucchini -- just in time to pick up another box tomorrow! Heh. I will probably be begging you all for zucchini recipes before long. Anyhoo, this was a HUGE zucchini that I sliced lengthwise into quarter-inch slices, brushed both sides with EVOO and seasoned with salt and pepper, then slapped on the grill (while the pork was resting) for a minute or two per side. Delish!

The salad bar ingredients were identical to last night's.