Dinner, Dinner, Dinner...

   I got a little under the weather and neglected the blog last week so this is my catch up post! There are four great dinners here, 3 of my creations and one from my friend Jamie,  who claims she can't cook "gourmet."  I'll let all of you decide for yourselves since Jamie's meal looks delicious and might be something I'll have to try!

Balsamic Chicken with Orzo

  My first creation is maple mustard glazed salmon with grilled sweet potatoes and a quick salad. I glazed the salmon and sweet potatoes with a simple mixture of maple syrup and Dijon mustard. It was insanely good and something I have to give credit to Mr. Bobby Flay for. The salad had romaine lettuce, dried cranberries, candied almond slivers and my favorite homemade poppyseed dressing.

   Our second dinner was inspired by some of the Mexican ingredients that I have on hand Chipolte-lime glazed shrimp over Mexican rice. [I think I might be going through a "glaze" phase] I used chipotle peppers, lime, cilantro and brown sugar in the glaze and will probably use the glaze on lots of others things because Doug LOVED this dish. There wasn't a single grain of rice left.

    I've got a hint to get your shrimp to get a pretty sear like the restaurants do... Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on them right before you put them in the pan... You'll be surprised the difference it makes. [It works on the grill too!]

   The final part to my trio of dinners was tonight's Smoked Sausage Hash. I added some chipolte peppers and smoked paprika to it [can't imagine why...lol] I made the hash with a smoked chicken sausage [trying to be healthy where I can] red potatoes, green peppers and onions. The fried egg on top is integral to the dish because the yolk adds moisture and flavor. Doug didn't believe me at first but I converted him.

I've got some catching up to do!

   Holy Cow! Time really can get away from you... New goal [posting every night is impossible at the moment] I'm going to try and post every other night, that seems a little more achievable. First item of business, the "sun" roasted tomatoes project. Note that sun is in parentheses as my husband said that oven and sun are not interchangeable... I did some research and it looks like the ones in the grocery stores aren't exactly sun dried either so if they can use the term then so can I! 
   The tomatoes took about 16 hours at 200 degrees. Next time I'll be quartering them instead of halving to see if it speeds up the process. I haven't used them yet as I'm still researching what I want to do with them. Pasta sauce, rub on roasted meat, baked in bread; there are too many possibilities but I'll be making a decision soon. In the meantime here is a picture of how they turned out after 16 hours in the oven. 

   College football has started up and is seeming to take up a lot more of my time than usual. I promised my baby brother [who is on a LDS mission in Puerto Rico] that I would stay up on sports for him so I took in 3 games over the course of 4 days. Thursday night was the U of U vs Pitt and sadly I passed out during the 3rd quarter. I was later woken by my husband to learn that the U won in overtime [Yippee!] Saturday was BYU vs Washington [BYU won, Woot!] and Monday night was Boise State vs Virgina Tech. Boise State won and added more fuel to the BCS busting fire! The past two Monday night's dinners have been pork nachos. I guess it's our game night meal plus nachos are one of Doug's favorites.

   Tuesday was my first attempt at using the cabbage! I chose to try out the recipe for fried cabbage that Grandma Rose gave me. Anything that is fried in bacon grease should be edible...She said to just fry up some bacon and toss in some onions and then put in the sliced cabbage. She mentioned that adding some caraway would be good if I had it. I didn't have caraway so I made do without it but will be picking some up next time I'm at the grocery store. It was about the time that I got everything in the pan that I realized I had no idea at what point the cabbage would be done... Was it just a quick saute or should the cabbage be slightly wilted or all the way to mush. I called Grandma only to find that she was out at a baby shower. Uncle Korey came to my rescue as he had cooked the recipe and said it needed to cook till the cabbage was slightly caramelized. I could hear Grandpa Doyle in the background questioning my willingness to take Korey at his word. So I asked a few more questions and felt confident that Korey knew what he was talking about [Grandpa did get me to think twice about it though, lol]
  Now, looking at the pictures it's pretty obvious I wasn't completely committed to the full cabbage experience. There is just as much bacon as there is cabbage. I'm shaking my own finger at myself since I ended up really enjoying the cabbage and wished there was more of it and less of the bacon. I 'll be doing this recipe again with a few adjustments; 1. I will use thin sliced bacon instead of think sliced. The pieces were cumbersome and hard to chew.  2. I will use more cabbage! I was completely surprised by how sweet it was. 3. I'll throw in the caraway that Grandma suggested.

Tonight I was a slacker wife in the dinner department and made Doug a Totino's pizza.  I do have a good excuse though! I made my first batch of jam! Strawberry-Nectarine [using up stuff from the co-op basket] jam to be precise. I came right home and started on the jam thinking it would take an hour to complete, so a really good dinner would follow. Well, it would of been an hour if I hadn't of struggled with peeling and coring the nectarines... I'm going to do some research because I had to of been doing something wrong. I'm going to confess that it took me an hour to do 8 nectarines... I even did the trick of scoring the nectarines and putting them in boiling water and then moving them to ice water to make it easier peel.

Eventually I got the nectarines all peeled and torn into pieces [pretty segments were out of the question]. I'm not a fan of big chunks of fruit so despite the warning from the pectin package I put the nectarines and strawberries in the food processor for a few pulses. I'm a fan of the jam jelly hybrid with tiny pieces of fruit. This was freezer jam not cooked jam just in case anyone was wondering. I asked many family members and experienced canners and they all said it was the best way for me to start out. Now I have 8 pretty little jars of what will hopefully be delicious jam. I was a little concerned about the white foam that formed but my mom assured me that it was fine and if I really wanted to I could skim it off but she thought it was bothersome and not necessary. The jam is now sitting on the counter for 24 hours at room temperature [that's what the instructions said] and then it will head to freezers and refrigerators across the Wasatch Front [After a full panel taste test has been completed] ... The stuff I got on my fingers tasted good so I have high hopes.

Food Co-op Time!

   We participate in a food co-op called Bountiful Baskets. It's a great way to get fresh produce while paying at least half of what you would pay at the grocery store. The co-op operates in several states and is all run by volunteers. If you are interested just head over to www.bountifulbaskets.org. The baskets change every week which helps to expand my eating habits and keeps us from getting in the "what's for dinner" rut. Often times we get things that I'm not familiar with so it provides me an excuse to do some online research and ask people for recipes to try. This week's basket was no exception as we got a couple things I'd never bought before.

   The basket had baby yams [one of my favorites!], romaine lettuce, green bell peppers, cabbage, celery, strawberries, nectaries, plums, grapes, a melon called Piel De Sapo and tomatoes [which I forgot to put in the original picture]. There were also bananas that I just realized I put away before I took the picture. Every basket is only $15! We've been doing the food co-op for a few weeks and I've now developed a system for making sure that we use everything because no matter how cheap something is, if you end up throwing it a way it was an expensive purchase. I don't do my supplemental grocery shopping until after I pick up the basket and do my menu planning around what we got for the week. Another great thing is that they try to give you somethings that are not quite ripe yet so you can make it last a little longer and not feel that you have to gorge yourself on produce for 2 or 3 days.
   I had no idea what Piel De Sapo was so I hopped on my laptop and googled it. On my quest for information I discovered a new food website that I've since used about 4 times. It's called foodista.com and it basically can answer any questions you have about any ingredient. I've learned that the Piel De Sapo is a Spanish melon similar to a honeydew in texture. I took it over to my family's BBQ today and everyone liked it and compared the taste to something like a crenshaw. I've never had a crenshaw so my opinion on the melon is that it was slightly sweet and somewhere between a firm watermelon and honeydew in texture. 
  I'm not really experienced with cabbage so it will be the experimental item of the week. I asked several family member what they do with cabbage and think I'll be trying a fried cabbage recipe that my Grandma Rose gave me and maybe cabbage rolls [which were suggested by both Aunt Wendi and Penni]. We still had some Roma tomatoes left over from the last baskets so tonight I am making my own sun [oven] dried tomatoes. I did some research online and it seems fairly simple just time consuming. I put them in the oven tonight at 200 degrees and will set my alarm to check on them at 6 hours. Wish me luck!

In 6-12 hours these will hopefully be "sun" dried 

  

I wouldn't have made the best pioneer...

   Ack!! I've gotten behind by 2 days... I'll make it up by posting twice today I guess. I had full intentions for an awesome post on Thursday night but then I turned on the Utah vs Pittsburgh game and fell asleep during the 3rd quarter. By the time I woke up there was no way my groggy self was going to be able to write anything coherent. 

   Thursday night was a pretty fun night at our house. I came home to my husband cleaning up the back yard at our new house. We moved in about a month ago and have been focused on the inside [which is still a work in progress]. Our house is an older brick bungalow with tons of trees. The bad part is that the people who lived here before us kind of let the trees take over and things are a bit out of control. We'd been trimming the trees here and there over the past couple of weeks and found ourselves with quite the trash pile. My husband decided that digging a fire pit and burning all of the trash was probably the best way to get rid of it. Next thing you know we have a mini bonfire going with all of the leaves, twigs and branches that were cluttering our yard.

   I kept looking at the fire and mulling over the idea of cooking dinner on it. There is something about flames that suck you in and make you want to control them [or maybe I have a little bit of a pyromaniac in me]. When I asked my husband what he felt like for dinner my idea became reality as his response was that he wanted to roast hot dogs. I made a run to the store for buns and while there decided that we needed to go all the way and do roasted corn on the cob and smores. I came home and chopped up some potatoes and put them in tin foil with spices and a little water and got the corn all wrapped up for the fire too. When I walked outside with my arms full my husband just shook his head and said that he didn't want to wait forever for those to cook but also knew there was no stopping me. 

   Now I've been camping tons of times and witnessed my parents cooking things in the fire with stupendous results. How hard could it be, you just wrap stuff in foil and cover them with coals to cook. Well, I'm going to need to go camping with my mom and Ron or at least have a lesson over the phone before I attempt backyard cooking again... I left the corn in too long and it burned. 

A little longer and we'd had popcorn ;)

Doug trying the "hot as shit" corn

   Next up were the potatoes that Doug was concerned were going to take forever to cook. After pulling out the corn and seeing how "well done" they were we decided we should probably check on the potatoes. We unwrapped the 3 layers of foil and discovered that the next time I'll need to remember to spray the foil with Pam. The potatoes that hadn't touched foil were really good but the rest had fused with the foil and burnt.

I was so dismayed by the results of the corn and potatoes that I completely forgot to take pictures of my perfectly roasted hot dogs... Luckily Doug remembered to take some of me devouring my smores :) Don't I look blissful?

I've only got time tonight for a quick post. I'm trying to be consistent with this blog and posting every night. We'll see how it goes...  

Grilled BBQ Chicken with Rosemary/Thyme Roasted Potatoes and Candied Carrots

Taking A Bite Out Of Blogger

   So this is my first official blog post! Stepping out into some new territory and not quite sure what to expect. I read a few blogs and have been mulling around the idea for a while. The hardest part was thinking about what in my life could be interesting enough to really write at length about. I'm just an average person that works and has a mild obsession with the Food Network, cooking and going out to restaurants. Obviously I like food but it took my husband suggesting that I blog about it for me to catch on that if I can talk about food/cooking all the time I can probably write about it pretty easy. 
   I started out as a REALLY picky eater and still have a few food phobias [more like dislikes] but if you ask my family I have come leaps and bounds in the past several years. I attribute my food awakening to the Food Network and to be more precise the original Iron Chef episodes from Japan. I found them one night on TV and remember being sucked in instantly. My parents didn't understand why I was so enthralled to watch meals that I would never eat. I acknowledged that I wouldn't go near 2/3rds of the dishes but still I was sucked in. Iron Chef became one of those shows that you would rush home to see or schedule other things around [this was all pre DVR. Which I can't live without now...] I was a solid Morimoto fan from the beginning. I think his food always seemed more approachable to me. It's one of my plans that if I'm ever near any of his restaurants to hit them up no matter the cost.  
   After watching Iron Chef until I'd seen some episodes several times I started to have an itch. I started wandering into the kitchen and quizzing Penni [My stepmom] about why she did this or that while cooking. Penni didn't really measure or use cookbooks and I was mesmerized by how she knew what went together and how to cook it. My life had by no means been a culinary desert before this moment. Both sets of parents were fabulous cooks who loved food and family gatherings were usually defined by the meals. My family had just learned early on that when I decided not eat something that was it. I was one of those kids that would sit at the table for hours refusing to eat peas and negotiating my way to what I wanted to eat. They figured it was easier to tailor my meals and allow me to deprive myself of the food world than stay up all night sitting at the table. They left out onions/mushrooms/tomatoes; they didn't offer sauces since I would scrape them off anyway and kept plenty of bread on hand since I would fill up on it every meal. My eating habits were difficult to say the least but Iron Chef Japan cracked the door open for me and got my culinary wheels turning. For the first time in my life I was truly interested in what was in my food not what wasn't. I guess it's fitting that the first night of this blog about my food adventures I made an Asian meal for dinner :) [Didn't even plan it that way]

Hoisin Garlic Beef & Broccoli Noddles