Seafood Chowder

Apparently this is food week. I’ve been on a mission to eat through the random proteins in our freezer.  So far I’ve successfully used almost a dozen turkey and beef burgers (tacos and shepherd’s pie) only having actual burgers once, turkey kielbasa (lentil soup), lots of rolls and of course left over home made ice-cream from this summer.  Why have I been on this mission?  The same reason I’m cleaning and purging around the rest of the house.  Getting ready for Baby; I want to be sure I have good go-to meals and meal starters in the freezer and pantry for when I’m to sleep deprived to figure out what’s for dinner (or lunch).  There has been a single piece of tilapia floating around in there for months (not sure how I ended up with just one) and I finally figured out what to do with it during last week’s snow storm.  Fish chowder!  You certainly don’t need to use tilapia, any white fish will do.  Also you could just use clams for clam chowder, just fish for fish chowder, leave out the corn if that’s not your thing, customize it for what you like. Recipe below



Ingredients 
2 Slices of bacon
1 small onion
1 stalk celery
1TBSP Butter
1TBSP Flour
1C Milk
2C Fish Stock
1 piece white fish
6 large shrimp, peeled and deviened
1 small potato
1C corn

Instructions

• Cut your bacon into bite sized pieces, let it get crispy in your chowder pot while you mince the onion and celery.
• Once crispy remove the bacon to a paper towel, try not to snack on it.
• Cook the onion and celery in the bacon fat until soft, then add the butter.
• Once the butter is melted whisk in the flour. Allow to cook for 5 - 10 minutes.
• Whisk in the milk and bring to a bubble then whisk in the stock.
• Add your fish, you can put the whole piece in, it will cook in the chowder than you can break it up with your spoon. The chowder should be at a simmer (medium/low heat)
• Poke your potato all over with a fork and microwave it for 3 - 5 minutes to par cook.
• Peel and chop the shrimp into bite sized pieces.
• Once you can handle the potato peel it then cut into bite sized pieces.
• While you’ve been doing all this prep your fish has been cooking and you should now be able to break it up with whatever you’ve been stirring your chowder with.
• Add the shrimp, potatoes and corn (I use frozen, toss it right in the pot frozen). And bring back to a bubble (medium heat).
• The potatoes will take the longest to cook, check it in 15 minutes once at a simmer, the chowder will also thicken up during this time.
• Check for seasoning, I used Lawry’s seasoning salt.  You could also use just salt and pepper or Old Bay.
• Once the potatoes are cooked and you are happy with the seasoning toss the bacon back in and you’re ready to eat!

Adventures in Gardening: Progress Update

We last left off here, I had "potted up" all the squashes and restarted the peppers.  Right before Mother's Day I "potted up" all the tomatoes and last week I ordered peppers from Burpee because my little baby seedlings won't be ready until August at the rate they are going.  I have to say that Burpee's Mix and Match plants are great, Burpee has perfected shipping live plants.  I planted beans at the beginning of last week before the rain so hopefully with some heat this week they'll come up.  The peas are looking great and loving the new trellis. I planted salad greens in all four short rows around the trellis but only this side came up.

Don't mind the weeds, it's so much better with the mulch this year than without like previous years.  The garlic is huge, so I hope it's a sign of good things to come.  The onions look ok and I think they will do as well as they did last year.

We've had some monster asparagus but not a lot of them.  I'll have to research if they need to be separated.

I got the winter squashes: spaghetti, butternut (x2) and acorn, hardened off over the past three weeks and finally into the ground on Memorial Day.  I ordered bush variety instead of vines this year and I'm hoping I'll get more than one fruit from each.

I also built a trellis Memorial Day for my cukes, summer squash and zucchini.  The cucumbers and summer squash were hardened off with the winter squash and went into the ground the same day.  My zucchini seeds never germinated so I picked up a plant at Home Depot.

The tomatoes have been hardening off for just over a week, they were in the breezeway for the first week (acclimating to temperature and light changes) and Memorial Day I moved them all outside.  I hope to get them in this weekend with the peppers.

Things are looking good!

Better BBQ

Now that we're really trying to be grown-ups, last weekend I thought I'd try for a BBQ that was a little more sophisticated than burgers and hot-dogs.  With BBQ season kicking off this weekend here are a few tips to help you easily elevate your BBQ:

Skip the Burgers and Dogs.  We did strip-steak and a whole roasted chicken, right on the grill.  For ten people I purchased two strip steaks and a seven pound roasting chicken. I purchased the steak on sale weeks before and froze it in the marinade all I had to do was pull it out of the freezer a few days before.  We have a grill roaster, but you can just as easily use a beer or soda can; just remove and discard the giblets, rinse, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss that baby on the grill over indirect heat. Once the chicken is done crank up the heat and toss on the steaks while the chicken rests, pull off the steaks and let them rest while you carve the chicken. Slice the steaks and you're ready to go.

What Can I Bring? A side.  It's that easy; if your friends don't ask get new friends, pick something up from the deli, make a pasta salad or make something else quick and easy.  Depending on your crowd you might want to have some easy appetizer dips on hand to prevent anyone from getting hangry.*

Use Your Dishwasher.  I'm not telling you to pull out the fine china but for steak you'll need real knives.  Use plastic plates that can be thrown away and your everyday silverware that can be tossed in the dishwasher.

I Don't Drink Beer. Everyone has a few friends that are adverse to beer, throw together a pitcher of sangria or margaritas.  Set out soda next to the pitcher as a gentle suggestion to mix them; this will do two things, it will stretch your liquor and it will prevent the non-beer drinkers from becoming too tipsy too fast.

Keep it Simple. Don't try new recipes go with something that is tried and true, that you don't have to think about, that you can make while having a conversation, that you can make ahead. And have fun!


*Hangry - verb. Hungry/Angry, grumpiness caused by hunger.

Lent Wrap-Up

     I took my camera with me for Easter but I forgot to take any photos. Not with my camera or my phone.  No photos of the cute new baby in a bunny hat, or the amazing spread that my aunt put together, or everyone's Easter outfits. Nada.  Let's be real though, everyone and their sister has posted Easter photos and you're over it.

     I can't even tell you what we ate during the last week of Lent. There was a pizza, some black beans and some pasta. I can tell you what we learned: I learned that I can pull together a satisfying vegetarian meal just as quickly as a "meat and potatoes" meal.  That, we can cope with life, without a beer or a glass of wine to help us along.  It was a challenge and a sacrifice and we have prevailed, stronger for it.

Incidental benefits: We were more productive; it is much easier to get things done on Saturday and Sunday morning when you aren't in a haze from the previous night's cocktails.  We got healthy; I lost 11% of my starting weight and got my metabolism moving again, Bruce lost 5%~ish.  Our pants and belts fit (better) Hooray for not needing a new summer wardrobe.  We saved our pennies, on average the grocery bill was 25% lower.

Moving Forward: Our goal is to not slip back into I don't feel like cooking let's just go out.  Also to save the drinking for the weekend.  I still have many meatless recipes that I want to try, so that element of our life will stay.  I want to eat down our freezer stocks before I run out to buy fresh proteins and before our CSA starts in June, which I feel much better prepared for this year.

We took Easter Monday off for traveling, we came home Sunday night snuggled on the couch drank the growler of BBC that had been in the fridge for a month and watched the season premier of Game of Thrones. It was awesome, all of it.

Lent Weeks 5 and 6

These two weeks were a little crazy, Bruce was away and I did some serious detoxing. Once Bruce's trip was scheduled I decided it would be the perfect time to give up coffee.  Once I started thinking about no coffee, I decided I should do week one of Whole Living's Detox Challenge.  It was rough, I did four full days of no caffeine, sugar, dairy, gluten or anything processed. On Monday (day 1) the headache was so bad I decided to turn our bathroom into a sauna and sweat everything out. Now that it is over, I feel so much better, particularly I have so much more energy. Bruce got a pass on our Lenten sacrifices because he was traveling out of the country for work.

Bathroom Sauna: (This is not out of focus that is steam!) Fill a very hot bath very slowly with the door closed and the fan off.  Do Not get into very hot tub, add cold water and don't scald yourself. The extra sweating helps eliminate toxins from your system, remember to replenish with lots of water.

What We Ate: (pre-travel/detox)

Wednesday: no idea it was two weeks ago!

Thursday: no idea

Friday: Black Bean Burger I added shredded carrots and used more bread crumbs

Saturday: no idea, possibly we ordered pizza

Sunday: Corned Beef and Cabbage with Beers (for St.Patrick's Day)

What I Ate: (detox)

Breakfast: Smoothies

Lunch: Smoothie and Roasted Corn, Red Pepper Soup

Dinner Monday: Roasted Veggies and a salad

Dinner T- Th: Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew

Dinner Friday: Homemade Mac&Cheese with parents

What We Ate: (post-travel/detox)

Saturday: Black Bean Burger same batch, frozen just as good

Sunday: Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Stew

Monday: Black Bean and Avocado Tacos

Tuesday: Eggplant Parm

Recipe: Chocolate Kettle Corn

Over Christmas I had picked up a bag of this chocolate kettle corn.  It was magical.  Two weeks ago I found myself wanting more, but not wanting to leave the house.  I googled around and decided I could make it at home.  I used this Kettle Corn recipe which came out great. So, I added chocolate because like bacon, chocolate makes most things better. It was magical and only took me took about twenty minutes.

Recipe: Fills one gallon zip top bag.
* adapted from savorysweetlife.com 

Ingredients
One batch of Kettle Corn
1/2 Cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

• Make your kettle corn
• Spread kettle corn in one layer on a sheet pan. For easy cleanup line your pan with tin foil.
• Melt chocolate chips.
• Spoon melted chocolate into a small zip top bag, smoosh into one of the bottom corners and twist the bag tight. see photo below
• Snip the chocolate corner and drizzle the chocolate over the kettle corn.
• Try to wait until the chocolate hardens.

Linking at:

Recipe: Ginger Tea

Like I mentioned last week, I've gotten into the habit of having tea every night before bed.  Now, I don't particularly remember where I read this, but, ginger is supposedly very good for your liver.  There are also many other health benefits that you can check out here and here (I liked this one because it was funny and the headline was ME) or by all means google around yourself.  I usually brew up a big batch Monday night and store it in a mason jar in the fridge, microwaving when I want some.  I can tell you that I sleep SO. MUCH. BETTER.

Recipe: 4-5 cups

Ingredients

1 Quart Boiling Water

~2 inches of Ginger Root sliced thin

Instructions

• Slice ginger.
• Steep for minimum of twenty minutes, I let mine go over night. 
• Enjoy with swanky honey, but maple syrup might be fun too.  Play around with your steeping time and how much ginger you use, start slow it can get spicy!  If you don't have fancy steeping apparatus either strain or wait until cool and pick the slices out with your fingers.

Lent Week 4

We've reached the half way point!  So technically Lent is seven-ish weeks, so I counted this weekend as the half way mark.  We started out pretty grumpy but after a productive weekend we had both gotten out of the funk.  We weighed in, and have both lost a good amount of weight, which, is a nice perk.

Sunday Night Dessert: Vanilla Tea with Hand-Made SnowCaps

What We Ate:
Wednesday: Roasted beet, rice salad
Thursday: I worked late and had left-overs, Bruce had tomato soup and grilled cheese.
Friday: Eggplant Cacciatore Subs
Saturday: Out for Pepe's Pizza with Tim and Nikki
Sunday: Cheesy Rigatoni with Roasted Potatoes and Cabbage
Monday: Egg and Cheese Sandwiches
Tuesday: Noodle Bowls

Recipe: Eggplant Cacciatore Subs

For this I combined two of my go-to meals; Eggplant Parmesan Subs and Chicken Cacciatore Subs.  Eggplant parm is a go-to during Lent when I've had to much pizza and Chicken Cacciatore Subs are a Rachel Ray recipe that is one of my dad's favorites.  I wanted to use some air baked breaded eggplant slices that I had in the freezer.  My first thought was eggplant parm, then eggplant parm subs, then but there should be more veggies, then I can do chicken cacciatore and substitute eggplant for the chicken. So these were born and I think they will be a go-to in the future.

Recipe: For 2

Ingredients
3 Large Slices of Eggplant Air Baked (instructions below)
Half package Baby Bella (Crimini) Mushrooms sliced
Half medium onion
Half bell pepper
3/4 small jar marinara sauce
2 Ciabata Rolls
4 slices Provalone cheese
Olive Oil

Instructions

• Pre-heat your oven to 375.  Over medium low heat, cook mushrooms in a covered saute pan until soft.  Add olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan, then add onions and peppers.  Increase heat to medium and saute vegetables until the onions are soft.  Add sauce and decrease heat to a simmer, this is the cacciatore.  
• Coat a small frying pan with olive oil and heat to medium.  Use thing pan to re-heat your eggplant slices and brown the crust. Once the eggplant is golden brown and re-heated, remove from the pan and cut in half.
• While the eggplant is re-heating, slice open your rolls.  I like to slice them so that only two sides are open making a pocket, this way the subs much less messy to eat.  Spread a little sauce in the roll.   Place three eggplant halves in each roll, top with the cacciatore then cheese. Your fingers will get a bit messy because the roll is not all the way open.  Cover a sheet pan with tin foil place subs on it and stick it in the oven.  Bake at 375 until the cheese is nice and melty. 

Air Baked Eggplant:  Slice and Salt your eggplant.  Dredge in egg, then bread crumbs (flavored as it please you).  Place a cooling rack on a sheet pan and lay your breaded eggplant slices on it.  Bake at 350 until browned.  

To Freeze: Place cooled, air baked eggplant slices on a sheet pan. Freeze.  Once slices are frozen they can be collected into a freezer bag.

Lent Week 3

We're still going strong.  Even with a growler of BBC in the fridge softly calling Christine, Bruce come drink me.  We were super carb heavy this week, I won't lie I was being a bit lazy and we discovered a new pizza place near us. I finally got back into my groove Sunday night cooking.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter Balsamic Sauce

What We Ate:

Wednesday: Pizza

Thursday: 3 Bean Chili

Friday: Pizza

Saturday: Chili Nachos

Sunday: Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter Balsamic Sauce

Monday: Buckwheat Crepes with Spinach, Mushroom and Swiss

Tuesday: Stuffed Sweet Potato Skins

Lent Week 2

We made it through a weekend away from home.  Which was huge. Huge in a hung out with my dad, went to a baby shower (with Mimosas) and stuck to our sacrifices, huge. My mom made us homemade Mac&Cheese (thanks mom!) that we didn't eat Saturday night so we took it home and ate it Sunday and Tuesday.  Totally against the be vegetarian and not eat all carbs rule, BUT, so good. Please exscuse the lack of photos for this post I have some completed project posts that I'm working on that will be a bit photo heavy!

What We Ate:
Wednesday: Stuffed Tomatoes
Thursday: Spicy Salad with Buttermilk Dressing
Friday: Pizza (homemade)
Saturday: Pizza/Eggplant Parm Sub (take-out with dad)
Sunday: Mac&Cheese
Monday: 3 Bean Chili
Tuesday: Mac&Cheese

Seriously.

I'm not pregnant. I feel like I should put that out there.  We are making a Lenten Sacrifice to not drink or eat meat, no babies. Not yet, things to do first.

Actually this post is about butter.  

I made popcorn from scratch, aka on the stovetop, which with a Le Crusette is what I imaging what using a shake weight must feel like. After all that effort I found that we had no butter to melt onto my hard earned Oscar watching snack. 

Wopwopwop. 

I ate it anyways, with the dregs from the butter dish and lots of salt.

Lent Week 1

Woof.  What a struggle. We are doing some serious detoxing and trying not to get bored.  Friday night we went to the gym and I may or may not have went to bed before ten to "read".  I pinned many many vegetarian recipes then spent entirely too much money at the food store. We have drunk a lot of water and had a few nice fires and I used one of them to do my photography homework.  It is very rewarding to learn how to use my camera out of automatic mode.

What We Ate
Wednesday: Stuffed Peppers
Thursday: Heart-shaped Pizza
Friday: Grilled Cheese & Tomato dipped in Tomato Soup
Saturday: Southwest Mac & Cheese
Sunday: Lentil Shepherd's Pie
Monday: 3 Bean Chili
Tueday: 3 Bean Chili (leftovers by request)

How To:

do Valentine's Day without alcohol or meat.  WopWop. Who's idea was this!?! Oh right, ours, together. But that is the true meaning of Valentine's Day right? So we cuddled up in front of a fire and ate a homemade heart shaped pizza.

Garden Wrap Up

Our garden was a whirlwind this year.  I managed to purchase grow lamps over the winter and set up seedlings in the basement.  I started tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, beans, butternut squash, spaghetti squash and acorn squash.  Bamm!

I got things going outside at the end of March with onion seedlings and neurotically checking to see if the asparagus was up.

April: Peas went directly in the ground.  Good puck peas!!! And I was able to start harvesting asparagus.  I won't lie I burned the first batch. It was. So. Sad.

The tomatoes, jalepeños, beans, peas, acorn squash, butternut squash and broccoli all came up from seed and went into the ground at the appropriate time.  I ran to the "DeathSpot" and picked up peppers, zucchini  summer squash and cucumbers. I also planted carrots and radishes.  I did this all before Memorial Day weekend, the lady that did my nails for the wedding might have commented about the dirt under my nails, fingers and toes. I also might have done all this planting in a tube top to prevent tank top tan.

Then we went away for 2+ weeks.

We came home and I had MADE VEGETABLES.  There were tomatoes and peppers and beans and peas and onions Oh My!  I tried to remember to weed, sometimes I even did.  I spread some compost and organic kelp fertilizer and harvested asparagus.

Then I had a pepper and the onion greens had turned yellow and fallen over, so pulled them out of the ground and I had MADE onions.

Insert around this point we also bought into a farm share.  Once a week we picked up a basket full of produce, milk and half and half; it was amazing and our grocery bill went way down.  We will do this again next year.

The onions kept very well in the fridge and they eventually went into salsa with garden peppers that was canned.

By August everything that was going to grow was producing.  I can't grow carrots or radishes in our yard after three years I'm throwing in the towel.  The broccoli never flowered (you eat the flowers) but we had tomatoes, peppers, squashes, peas, beans and asparagus.

We will eat it all!  I made sauce and salsa with the tomatoes.  The peppers and onions also went into the salsa.  Peppers also went into chili.  The bumper crop of jalepeños I used to make poppers. We got tons of corn in our farm share and I made this great roasted red pepper and corn soup. I also made two dozen pints of tomato sauce with tomatoes from the farm stand down the road. Oh! and Slow Cooker Ketchup from Simple Bites, which is amazing and easy and Bruce still hasn't stopped talking about it.

Before Sandy arrived we pulled the husks of plants, planted some garlic bulbs and mulched six inches of leaves into the garden.  Which is when I noticed that the broccoli had flowered.  Maybe next year I'll get it in the ground earlier or maybe I'll do something else.

S'mores Popcorn

I made this s'mores popcorn for a late night snack after my cousin's wedding.  It was so good.  I had to adapt the recipe a little bit because I only had one package of popcorn.

 It's pretty easy.  Pop the popcorn, put in a bowl.  Measure and mix in marshmallows and cereal. Because I changed the ratios I ended up using 2 3/4 Cups of cereal and 2 1/4 marshmallows.

 Melt the chocolate and lay the dry mixture on a sheet pan.  Drizzle the melted chocolate over the dry mix.

I made a huge mess with the chocolate trying to find the best tool for drizzling.  I'll save you the trouble and tell you that it was a whisk but you'll still get some big clumps.  

It was a huge success and a great sweet and salty bite for late night snacking!

Pot Stickers

I don't remember what inspired me to make pot stickers.  I pinned it, so I must have seen it somewhere. I used this recipe and it was great.  Nothing compared to what we had at the rehearsal dinner last Friday but for my first time they turned out pretty good.

This recipe makes way more than a single meal for us but they freeze great.  As I made them I placed them on a sheet pan, once they were all done I stuck the whole sheet pan in the freezer overnight.

 Once they were frozen I used a room temperature spatula to loosen them and tossed them in a freezer bag.

 The best part is that they go straight from the freezer into the pot and are ready in 15 minutes

I spent around ten dollars and this will yield three meals for us.  It probably took me an hour an a half start to finish to construct them.  But taking into account that it will save me a lot of time after a long day of work it was worth the effort.  I suppose that I could have purchased won-ton wrappers to save some time but the dough was simple to make and pretty much free.

Bun, my version.

I eat out at work about once a week, depending on how stressed I am. Until this summer the only thing I ever ordered was Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup.  But one day it was just too hot.  I decided to get Bun, it's a salad with rice vermicelli and grilled meat, I usually get chicken.  My cart serves it with a sweet and hot chili dressing and a peanut vinegrette.

This is my version.  I've yet to master the sweet and hot chili dressing (honestly I forgot about it the first few times I made it) and when I'm at home I use marinated London Broil.

Recipe
Romaine Lettuce
Tomato
Cucumber
Rice Vermicelli
London Broil

Marinate
Teryakie Marinate
Fish Sauce
Liquid Amines (or soy sauce)
Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Chinese 5 spice

Peanut Vinaigrette
Smooth Peanut Butter
Rice-Wine Vinegar
Sirracha
Liquid Amines/Soy Sauce
Pasta cooking water

Cook the noodles according to the package directions. Prep the marinate, mix it all together until it tastes good.  I'm sorry I have no measurements for you, caution with the fish sauce it's salty.  Then slice and marinate the beef.  I usually marinate a big batch, then break it down into smaller batches and freeze them.  Stir-fry the beef, prep the salad and dressing.  Again I have no measurements other than to say I use a rounded tablespoon for the peanut butter and it's always to much.  And careful with the sirracha it's sneaky hot and if you don't like hot don't use it. I serve mine on a plate because I don't have a bowl big enough.
Enjoy!!!

Sprouting Sprouts

Have I mentioned yet that I am in love with Pinterest?  I am, click the button, follow me.  It's Amazing.

One of the first things I pinned was this article from Simple Bites about sprouting your own sprouts. I took the plunge and ordered the seeds and screen from the recommended source.

Once everything arrived I promptly mixed my seed varieties together.  I have lots of these quart containers from my weekly trip to the Vietnamese cart outside work *mmmmm noooodles*

I set up the screen in one of my jars.

Five days later I had this:

I've found that they keep much better than what I've bought from the supermarket and they are super tasty.

Menu For the Week

These days we're trying to cram as much into a weekend as possible.  We lost EIGHT trees during Hurricane Irene, Bruce is in school full time and three fall weddings with assorted happenings.  So on the weekends we are around I try to get the shopping done as efficiently as possible to get home to stack wood or assist with backyard cleanup.  I find that one thing that helps with that is to know what we're eating during the week.  This week looks like:

Sunday: Pasta with home made sauce (just canned) and Sausages (on sale with a coupon at BJ's)

Monday: Cooking Light Pork Stir Fry  (Pork tenderloin on sale at Stop & Shop)

Tuesday: Bun or Soup

Wednesday: Bun or Soup

Thursday: Pork Burritos or Grilled Cheese and Soup

Friday: most likely eating on the road

Saturday: Christina's Wedding

Bun is Vietnamese (I think) salad~ish with romaine lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, rice vermicelli, and stir-fry beef (already marinated in the freezer in single serving packs) with a peanut vinaigrette.

I'm also planning on making Ina's Corn Chowder today to have through the week, I have a ton of frozen corn that's taking up way to much room in the freezer.  Because both of these are really quick I threw them in for nights that Bruce has class (with PB&J for dinner).

Thursday I left as a toss-up in case we go to the gym or I'm lazy and don't feel like cooking.

We have a wedding this weekend in Boston so we'll be taking off after work on Friday being a realistic person, Bruce is going to want fast food.  GROSS but we indulge when we're spending hours in the car.

This took me about 30 minutes to put together. Including looking at the Stop & Shop flier, BJ's coupon book and my online coupons. I write the lists and the menu and hit the road.  It took me under two hours at three stores. Go us, time to start the chowder and stack some wood.