digest of past digestions

These are most of the dinners from the dark blogging hole of the last two weeks done a la Reader's Digest Condensed Classics-style.

Pasta with Eggplant, Broiled Portabellas (dynamite flavor, although it's difficult to do portabellas wrong), peas and corn, and tossed green salad. (Pasta and Portabellas are both from Low-Fat Moosewood.)

Sweet potato and carmelized onion pizza. (Definitely will make again. Sooo good.)

Blueberry pancakes.

Falafel with Cucumber Sauce (got this recipe from allrecipes, hands down my favorite falafel recipe) and Mediterranean Couscous salad (from Low-Fat Moosewood). Shortbread (Martha Stewart's Cookies) for dessert pictured with the Baker Herself.

Creamy Kale Soup with biscuits. (Low-Fat Moosewood recipes. It's a potato soup-base that is pureed. Next time I'll puree the kale as well, for the kids' sake.)

Creamy Pasta salad with Baked Beans and Brown Bread (all recipes came from my Low-Fat Moosewood) This dinner was super yummy.

Pancakes, again. (I'm not sure which recipe I used. I vary between several.)

Green Potatoes from Laurel's Kitchen (broccoli-enhanced twice-baked potatoes) and garden-fresh green beans (steamed then pan-fried in olive oil).

every second counts

I've been absent.

After over a month apart I'm spending every moment possible with my husband before he leaves for another two weeks. I'll come back then.

mother's day bbq

My mommy ordered hamburgers, potato salad and chips for dinner. These were high-piled everything-burgers. I sauteed onions and mushrooms. We had cheddar and American slices (blech), lettuce, tomato slices, onion slices, relish, dill pickles, and jalapenos. The only thing we missed was bacon. (I had some turkey bacon but I forgot to cook it until later and it ended up being not quite the freshest stuff available. We chucked it.)

The potato salad is our family favorite, no-recipe, just-eyeball-the-amounts potato salad. I love it when it is freshly made and the potatoes are room-temperature. It's still good after it's been refrigerated, but not as good.

Add our favorite Kettle Chips and it could have been a Memorial Day barbecue. (Mom's fave are these.)

We went to the Farmer's Market yesterday and brought home two pints of blackberries. So tonight I fulfilled a two-year promise to my kids by making a blackberry cobbler. My dad picked up some BlueBell Homemade Vanilla and mmmmmm...it was a delight.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

bruschetta + brussel sprouts + salad

We got to go to San Antonio's Pearl Farmers Market. San Antonio has 1.3 million residents. The town in Oregon that we moved from has roughly 50,000. That being said, the Farmers Market in SA was not too impressive. It was about 1/3 the size I'm used to. Buuuuuuut, it was a Farmers Market and I was completely grateful. We bought those lovely brussel sprouts you see and an awesome sourdough batard (loaf), as well as a beatiful, still-roots-on basil plant.

Is basil not one of the most intoxicating smells on this planet?

I chopped up some tomatoes, kalamata olives, garlic and basil and thew them in a bowl. I squeezed half a lemon over them all and added some salt and olive oil. While I made the green salad (romaine and carrot, it was very difficult) I let the mixture marinate. I grilled some thick slices of the sourdough, piled on the tomato mixture and sprinkled mozzarella on top. After a few minutes under the broiler, my bruschetta were finished.

I had never cooked brussel sprouts before. I followed Alton Brown's method and they turned out tasty. In hindsight I should have trimmed the hard stems off but we just ended up holding them by the stems and biting the tender baby cabbages off. It's always funner to eat with your hands, right?

Salad = good enough = nothing special = borderline boring.

Very yummy meal. I ate two slices of bruschetta, but I couldn't fit them both on the plate at the same time. Technically that means I went back for seconds, but I'm pretty sure that doesn't count. It's one of those "spirit" rather than "letter" of the law situations, I think. Don't you?

fuh-jee-tuhs

We are at my parents' house. Mom had a package of fajita-spiced chicken she needed to use up. We obliged. There were no peppers, but they were still tasty.

We handmade the tortillas from a bag of tortilla mix. They are really good and I would probably use it at home except for one ominous ingredient. Can you guess it? Partially freakin-hydrogenated oil. Come on! I thought we were beyond that stuff.

Mom opened a couple cans of black beans and I made my favorite white rice. (I loooove Mexican rice but we were hungry and I didn't want to mess with it.) Some sauteed onions with cheddar, sour cream and yummy taco sauce made the meal complete.

PS - The drink you see is this awesome iced tea my mom made from this mandarin orange herbal stuff sent to her by her English "adopted daughter."

good ol' san antone

While I wait out the final week of my husband being gone, I decided to grab the kidlings and scoot off to San Antonio to my parents. Dad took us out to Mamacita's for dinner. I was ever so thankful. And now I'm ever so full with too many chips and some avocado-y, green salsa stuff with my spinach enchiladas.If you go, try the vegetarian mushroom fajitas. Absolutely the best thing I've ever had there. Delicious.

Mamacita's has the coolest building. To get in you cross a bridge over a sweet little stream.(According to their website it is symbolic of the Rio Grande.) Once through the doors into the foyer is the largest crystal chandelier I have ever laid my eyes on. It must be at least 10 feet across. Beautiful. The inside of the restaurant is made to look like you are dining out under the stars in a Mexican Puebla, complete with shooting stars. On a roof  nearby stands an animatronic Davy Crockett who will serenade you with his fiddle every thirty minutes or so. (My kids say, "He's kinda creepy, Mom." I kinda have to agree, but at least it gives you something to look at if conversation starts to wane.)

sushi

The kids also decided tonight's dinner: sushi. It was very simple tonight. We really only had surimi crab, wasabi and a few last pieces of ginger.  I also made tamago, which all but one of us adore. I didn't make it into nigiri today like I did previously, we just ate it in slices. I totally overate, but I think that's forgivable with sushi.

This tamago recipe is delicious and I always make my sushi rice according to these guys.

hot dogs + veggie sticks

The kids begged me for hot dogs. I had to admit they sounded pretty good. So I picked up a couple packages of our beloved Hebrew Nationals and baked up some hotdog buns from my super-versatile pizza dough recipe. Chopped up some carrots and celery and we all watched Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (Is it just me or is Anakin the whiniest little baby in that episode?) in honor of Intergalactic Star Wars Day, May the 4th. (May the fourth be with you!)

at the taco, taco cabana.

i broke down today. 'nuff said.

sweet and sour veggies (with a teeny bit of chicken)

I did it again. I used a vegetarian recipe and added chicken. I wonder if there are people who monitor for this kind of sacrilege.

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be Sweet-and-Sour Seitan and Vegetables. I was out of wheat gluten to make the seitan so I was going to make it with only the veggies. My son then reminded me that we had chicken. We looked. One lone, broken piece of chicken breast. (about 1/2 c after we cooked it) We added it. There was also supposed to be red pepper but they were so very expensive that I went with green, not realizing that the end dish would end up so monochromatic. Oh well.

The rice was cooked according to the delicious method proposed by Alton Brown on Good Eats. It's so delicious I could just eat a bowl of this rice and be perfectly content.

On the whole, I'm not a huge fan of sweet and sour dishes. This one was just fine and easy enough that if I need it, I know it's there and it wouldn't be horrible to have to make it again.


Quick and Delicious Long Grain Rice recipe
Sweet and Sour Seitan and Vegetables recipe

reworked yesterday

Quick dinner tonight. I took the beans from yesterday, pureed them in my food processor and served it in tortillas with cheddar, sprouts (home-made), sour cream and taco sauce. Add salad and there's dinner. Tasty. Filling. Healthy.