Day 2 of the photo challenge: Last night Kevin made a wonderful chicken concoction with the leftover ingredients in our fridge; he pounded the chicken flat, breaded it, and topped with balsamic vinaigrette, tomatoes from the garden, and feta and blue cheese. When he started he said he was going to make a healthy meal with chicken breast, green beans and brussels sprouts, but something tells me the breaded chicken and cheese on top cancelled out some of the original intent. It was pretty awesome though. I'm both sad and happy to admit that I think Kevin is officially a better cook than I am.
Our rat Mim's loved the green beans. Just another reason that makes rats are awesome pets... you don't have to buy rat food for them, they can just eat what you eat. And I know that it's weird that we have pet rats, but common, isn't she a little cute? How funny are her little hands holding that green bean?
We went to our friends Joe and Sarah's house for the husker game. Can't believe it's Husker season already... Best part of football season is definitely the food. Here's Kevin's "famous" Mexican dip. I think he might have actually stolen the recipe from his sister Melissa and claimed it as his own.
Here's the top secret recipe. Simply layer the ingredients:
1 can of refried black beans
Mix of 1/2 to 3/4 container of sour cream and about half a taco seasoning pack
Shredded cheese
Shredded fresh lettuce
Sliced fresh tomatoes
Red onion
Green onion
I've been learning more about exposure lately. So while watching the game I thought I'd practice some of what I've been reading on our friend's dog Gizmo. Here is the image straight out of the camera shot in aperture priority at 2.8, ISO 1600, shutter speed 1/200. Exposure compensation was left at 0.
Here's a quote about exposure compensation from the following link that I found helpful, "The contrast or difference in brightness between the subject and the background can fool an exposure system, particularly if the subject occupies a relatively small part of the scene compared to the background. The brightness of the background is so predominant that the automatic exposure system adjusts the exposure to render the overall brightness as a middle gray. If the main subject is lighter than the background, it will be overexposed and too light. If it's darker than the background, it will be underexposed and too dark."
So because the camera was tricked by the black dog, and underexposed the image, I needed to compensate by adjusting the exposure compensation up by 2 stops. This decreased the shutter speed to 1/40th of a second. This is what I got. Favorite picture of the day:
After work Kevin and I went for a run and I ran farther than I have in a long time... get ready for it... 1.5 miles. Yeah, kind of embarrassing when some of our friends are running 26 miles in marathons for fun on the weekends. After our run I made some dinner - chicken marsala, roasted brussels sprouts, and quinoa pilaf. I'm trying a "five dinners in an hour or less" menu from allrecipes.com. I know I've said it before, but I freakin love allrecipes.com. I just took a look at this menu, decided it looked pretty good, and it automatically put together an entire grocery list together that I could use on my iPad as I grocery shopped.
It was 8:30 p.m. tonight, and I had successfully worked a long day at work, gone for a run with my husband, and cooked a dinner consisting of 3 different recipes that involved chopping up more than 4 different fresh vegetables that I just bought from Whole Foods. I opened a bottle of red wine and was feeling pretty good about what I'd accomplished today, when I started paying attention to what was playing on TV - Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN. He was reporting on Africa and the worst drought in 60 years. Right now over 2 million people are on the brink of starvation.
Suddenly my home-cooked organic brussels sprouts didn't seem so cool...
When I googled it, this is what I read: The World Food Program expects 10 million people in the Horn of Africa to require food assistance. They currently provide aid to 6 million people in East Africa. The group said it is facing a shortfall of 40% on the $477 million needed to address hunger in the region. In these famine zones, almost 10% of the children under 5 die every 3 months.
Here's a one minute video:
When I hear numbers like 2 million, it's almost hard for me to really wrap my head around it. I'd like to think of myself as a generous person, but let's be honest, I hear about causes, read about charities, and get solicited by people all the time, and do nothing. I don't know if it's because the problem seems too big, or if I'm too busy, or if it's because I already donate money to other things, but I just walk away and don't give.
But something about all those children starving while I'm comfortably drinking my glass of wine just got to me tonight. At the end of the UNICEF video it said you can donate $10 by texting the word "food" to 864233. And for $10 you can make a difference. It can keep a child alive for 10 days. So I did it. And it was easy. And it felt right. And it was a small difference, but it still helped. 10 days worth of food.
When I post on this blog, somewhere between 30 and 60 people read it that day. Imagine if every single one of you reading right now just pulled out your phones and text "food" to 864233, or jumped on the UNICEF website and gave 10 dollars. That could mean food that can save people's lives for almost 5,000 days....
So I may be a little bit biased, but I think I have the best husband in the world. He made some amazing stuffed peppers and carrots and even cleaned up the kitchen when he was done. I knew he was proud of himself when he put the dinner he made on a white plate (food always photographs better on white plates and I have a habit of moving it to a white plate if I decide to take a picture). Ladies and gentleman don't ever let Kevin complain to you about my picture taking. This white plate proves that deep down, he likes it :)
An amazing stuffed pepper recipe courtesy of Melissa, Kevin's sister (who referred us to the recipe), Paula Deen (who created it), and to Kevin (who made it perfectly). Here's the link to the recipe: click here!
Ingredients
4 large red bell peppers
3/4 pound ground chuck
1/2 pound ground pork
1 medium onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons beef bouillon granules
2 teaspoons House seasoning, recipe follows
1 cup cooked rice
1/2 cup jarred cheese and salsa
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup diced tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped green onion tops
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup hot water
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Start by cutting the peppers in half lengthwise, leaving the stems intact, and halving them also. Remove the seeds and ribs inside the peppers.
Using a hot skillet, saute the ground beef, pork, onion, garlic, 1 teaspoon of bouillon granules, and house seasoning together. Saute until onions become translucent. Drain the fat off. Add the rice, cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, green onion tops, and soy sauce. Mix well and stuff the mixture into the peppers. In a small bowl, mix the hot water and the remaining bouillon granules. Pour this mixture into a shallow casserole large enough to hold all of the peppers. Place the stuffed peppers in the dish, cover with foil and bake for 25 to 35 minutes. Remove the foil and spoon the juice from bottom of the casserole over the top of the peppers. Bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
House Seasoning:
1 cup salt
1/4 cup black pepper
1/4 cup garlic powder
Mix ingredients together and store in an airtight container for up to 6 months
As soon as I wrote the title, I realized how obscure this meal sounds. Regardless, it was actually a really easy and tasty dinner. I have a bad habit of being a bit more ambitious during my grocery shopping than I am with my cooking... sure pork steak is on sale at Whole Foods... I don't exactly know what that is, or how to cook it, but why not, let's buy some.
Then after a long day of working I'm not ready to tackle a big cooking project, and the veggies I've bought get limp or moldy in the fridge while the meat nestles itself into the bottom of the freezer for months. Then my husband is really happy that we just spent $400 at Whole Foods. Ugh.
BUT, I'm proud to say that tonight I actually used some of the more "ambitious" ingredients in my fridge. I read a blog called Kath Eats Real Food. She literally posts about every single thing she eats. Sometimes it's a bit TMI, even for someone as crazy as me, but she does take a lot of very pretty pictures of food and definitely has some great ideas. One of her ideas is kale chips.
So here was my first attempt at kale chips. I ripped the kale into smaller chunks, drizzled them with olive oil, then sprinkled a little bit of kosher sea salt, shredded Parmesan cheese, and creole seasoning. Then I just mixed it all together on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
It surprised me how much the kale chips shrunk in the oven, so next time I'll definitely use the whole head of kale. Other than that, they turned out great. They were super tasty, and actually felt more like you were eating a potato chip then one of the healthiest vegetables in the world. Kinda cool, huh? I'll definitely be adding these to the rotation.
Here is a video of Kath doing a little video demo on kale chips. Of course I watched the video AFTER I already made them. Jeez Amanda.
I also made some edamame using this recipe. The recipe called for lima beans, but after spending five minutes in the freezer section at the grocery store last week, without finding any lima beans, I opted for edamame instead.
For the pork steak recipe I relied on one of my favorite recipe sources: allrecipes.com. I just typed in the ingredient "pork steak" and sorted by highest rated recipes. Of course I didn't plan ahead well enough to have all the ingredients onhand for any of the recipes so I sort of combined these two recipes (Jagerschnitzel recipe and Iowa Pork Steak recipe) and improvised. First I pounded the pork steaks flat, then dipped the pork steaks on a plate with a beaten egg, then on a plate with bread crumbs, and then sprinkled them with salt and pepper. I cooked the pork steaks in an oiled skillet over medium heat about 4 minutes on each side until the bread crumbs were a little crispy and the internal temperature of the pork reached 140 - 145 degrees. A digital meat thermometer has made the single largest impact on improving my cooking skills. I would really recommend buying one, especially if you're not an experienced cook with that 6th sense as to when meat is perfectly cooked. Thanks again mom!
After the pork steaks were done I put them on a plate and covered with foil while I made a sauce. I sauteed about half of a chopped red onion in the leftover oil from the pork steaks, then added a can of cream of chicken soup (would have added cream of mushroom soup, but I didn't have any). Then added a little bit of water (about 1/4 cup), a packet of french onion soup mix, and 1.5 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce. I put the sauce on the meat and paired with the kale chips and edamame, and Voila!
Here was the final product:
Kevin thought it was really, really good. He couldn't stop raving about it. Probably because I haven't cooked a proper meal in weeks... poor boy.
Last night Kevin took some of the leftover Pasta Fresca sauce (click here for posting about this) and put it on some toasted sourdough bread. Voila! A new dish: Bruschetta Fresca! I think this might have actually been better than the original dish.
A few hours later I started making a late dinner - crab legs and shredded brussel sprouts.
I like to try different recipes, so I tried this brussel sprout recipe that called for bacon, pine nuts, green onion, butter, salt, and pepper. Seemed like it would be really good, but it was just OK. And since it called for bacon (and some of the grease that went with it) and 1/4 cup of butter, I transformed one of the healthiest veggies into an artery clogger. Ugh.
Does anyone have a brussel sprout recipe they'd recommend?
I hope everyone has a lovely Saturday. I'm going to man-handle myself into starting a paper I've been putting off for weeks... wish me luck!
After months of being completely lazy in the kitchen, I finally mustered up the energy to cook something a little fancier that than grilled cheese. When we were in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, we had the most wonderful pasta dish called Pasta Fresca and I wanted to try to make it myself. My mom has an amazing ability to eat something at a restaurant and then name almost every ingredient and spice in the dish and re-create it perfectly while somehow actually managing to make it even better than it was before. Unfortunately I'm nowhere close to mastering that skill. My version of Pasta Fresca tasted absolutely nothing like the pasta that I had at Mescolanza, but it was still pretty yummy. Here's what I did:
I chopped up one and a half red onions, minced a whole bulb of garlic (seemed like a lot but it actually wasn't too garlicy), and coursley chopped a small bunch of basil. Then I added two cans of italian style chopped tomatoes, 2 teaspoons salt, 2 teaspoons pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper. While this mixture simmered over medium-low heat, I put the scallops in salt water then drained them (the guy at Whole Foods recommended this). Then I cooked the scallops over medium heat with butter, olive oil, and garlic salt for about 6 minutes. I boiled the spinach pasta for 3 minutes, then scooped some pasta, sauce, and a spoonful of scallops onto a plate and topped it with goat cheese and parmesean.
I've recently really started liking goat cheese. I forgot how strong it was and added a bit too much, but it still turned out pretty well.
Last weekend Kevin and I watched my little brother Jonah while my parents went to Mexico to an all-inclusive resort. They took a well-deserved vacation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. We had a great weekend together. The highlight was going to visit Kevin's cousin Jeff at his fire station with Kevin's sister and her family (Thanks Jeff!).
The low-point of the weekend was after Jonah left I immediately started to get sick. Jonah had a cough the whole weekend and I think the little bugger got me sick. Soar throat, runny nose, coughing, and a fever off and on. I've been sick for over a week now. Sucks!
I'm taking Mucinex, got on an antibiotic on Saturday, and took it easy all weekend (Kevin and I spent all Sunday on the couch watching the entire first season of Dexter) but I'm still feeling pretty miserable. Yesterday a co-worker recommended a shot of whiskey to help me feel better. Apparently a doctor friend of his said a shot of whiskey is often more effective than most cough medicines. Not sure if I'm desperate enough for a shot of warm whiskey so after surfing around on the internet, I stumbled across a hot totty recipe. It called for tea, honey, brown sugar, lemon, and whiskey. Tastes sort of weird but feels pretty good on my throat. God I hope it helps, I'm tired of being sick. Any other suggestions?
So I'm completely infatuated with the the iPad. I downloaded a bunch of really cool apps today and I haven't even had time to play around with all of them yet, but I'm super excited. One of the app's I used tonight was an app by allrecipes.com. I've used allrecipes.com for years to find new recipes and I've always loved how you can see how the recipe has been reviewed by other cooks. It's sort of like the amazon.com of cooking. If you haven't checked out this website yet I'd highly recommend it. If you upgrade to a pro account (I just did today) you can even create a customized menu and it will create an organized grocery list for you.
In the past when I want to make something new I surfed around all recipes.com, checked to see if I had all the ingredients, jotted down the instructions on a piece of paper, brought the paper over to the kitchen, started making the food, and then when I couldn't read my handwriting or started to second-guess what I wrote down I'd go back to to the computer and look at recipe again. Yes, I know... a lot of these problems could be averted if I wasn't too cheap to buy ink for our printer.
Tonight I downloaded the allrecipe app for $2.99 (there is also a free version but you can't sync with your allrecipes account), so now all I have to do is open my recipe box, click on the recipe, and start cooking. It even has a timer built into it. Also if I'm not sure if I have all the ingredients for a recipe I can bring the iPad into the pantry with me. How cool is that?? Plus the iPad case that Kevin bought makes a little stand.
When i turned the iPad off I could see my reflection in it. Like a huge dork I took my picture, and of course that's the exact minute Kevin came walking into the room. Yes, he started making fun of me right away. Notice anything different about my hair? Bangs!!
Here's the link to the stuffed cabbage recipe that I made. I found this recipe this summer when I was looking for a way to use the ground ham I bought at the farmers market. Tonight I didn't use ground ham and it was still good, but not quite as flavorful - the ground ham really makes the recipe. If you don't have any ground ham make sure you add some more spice... my personal favorite spice for something like this is Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning.
Anybody else have any iPad must-have applications they'd recommend?
Neither one of us made a really big deal about Valentine's Day this year, but it ended up being a great day, the second best Valentine's Day I've ever had. My very favorite Valentine's Day was February 14, 2008. Kevin and I had gone on our very first date a few days before, and I was trying to avoid that akward "we just went on our first date and now it's Valentine's day and we're not even officially dating" so I had already made plans to go to a Valentine's day techno dance party at Slowdown with a bunch of friends. Well, I ended up having a terrible day at work, and the last thing I wanted to do was go to a dance party. I called Kevin and told him I had changed my mind about Slowdown and he invited me to his house to hang out. I met Kevin's roomates for the first time, and then since I was still in my work clothes he offered me some sweat pants and a tee shirt. I changed into his comfy clothes and we had a glass of wine and talked and watched TV. I remember feeling like we had been dating for years instead of like our second date. As cheesy as I know it sounds it just felt right.
So here we are three years later :)
Instead of going out we decided we'd make dinner at home. We made a wedge lettuce salad, 3 pounds of crab legs, pototoes, brussel sprouts, and uncorked one of the bottles of wine that we got last year in Italy on our honeymoon. My parents use to do this a lot when we were little. With four small kids sometimes a babysitter and fancy dinner wasn't in the budget so they'd put us to bed and have their own home date.
Kevin and I make dinner at home quite a bit, but normally we eat in about 15 minutes and then jump up right away to start doing dishes and getting on with our evening. For this dinner we put on some music, lit a candle, and didn't leave the table until we had finished our bottle of wine. It was so relaxing and the perfect way to celebrate Valentine's day. Not to mention the whole dinner cost us under fifty bucks and the crab legs were absolutely amazing. Who knew that crab legs were so easy? All you have to do is boil them for 3 - 5 minutes, clarify some butter (here's how to do it), and grab a lemon wedge.
Just for fun - here are some picture from the vineyard in Italy where we got this wine.
If you're ever in Tuscany I'd recommend this vineyard. The castle and vineyard date back to the 1400's and it was a really interesting tour with great wine. The picture of the vineyard is from their website. Check out all the info on the vineyard here.
After dinner we exchanged our gifts. I got Kevin a shirt and watch from a new store that opened in Midtown called Republic of Couture (which by the way is a very cool store). Then of course Kevin completely outdid my gift and gave me and iPad. AHHHH!!! An iPad!!!! I could not stop hugging it and jumping up and down. I've been using it constantly and let me tell you, it is freakin sweet. I've wanted one for awhile and even blogged about it back in September, but couldn't justify such an expensive toy. He completely surprised me with it.
Don't you love it when you stumble across a new recipe that's really easy and yummy? Better yet, when your husband stumbles across the recipe and makes it for you while you sit your lazy butt in front of the TV :)
Here is Kevin's Tikka Marsala over Basmati Rice:
He sauteed up some chicken, big chunks of green peppers, and onions, added the can of Tikki sauce, and 1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream (he actually added 3 tbs of butter, 1/4 cup of half and half, and some Greek yogurt since Hyvee was out of their organic heavy whipping cream). Put the whole mixture over some basmati rice, and voila an easy and tasty Indian dish. Sure, he could have made the Tikka Marshala sauce from scratch, but this sauce was so yummy and you could actually recognize and pronounce all the ingredients! Do you guys have any easy dinners you'd recommend?
So I bought a new blender to make margaritas, and it turns out it has some other useful purposes... like making smoothies :)
I was inspired by one of my new cooking books, The Family Chef. I've really enjoyed this book (thanks mom!). The book is written by two sisters that work together as personal chefs in California for all sorts of famous people. I think their writing about cooking in general and how it plays a role in their families is almost better than their recipes, although those are good too.
There are several recipes in this book for yummy smoothies, but one of their big themes of the book is being open to improvising if you don't have all the ingredients. So, although most of their smoothie recipes included things like minced fresh ginger, coconut water, and milled flaxseed, I opted to use only the ingredients I had onhand.
After making three successful smoothies with all sorts of ingredients, I'm convinced you really can't make a bad smoothie as long as you have have a small bag of frozen fruit, a couple globs (about 1.5 cups) of yogurt (I really liked the Horizon Organic Fat Free Vanilla), some water (you can start by adding 1/4 a cup and then add more later if your smoothie is too thick), and a little bit of sugar (or I prefer Agave Nectar in things like this).
So there you have it, grab whatever ingredients you have onhand, throw it in a blender, and voila a wonderful breakfast or afternoon snack!
P.S. - Kevin liked the smoothies too. The poor boy has learned to hide when the camera comes out, because who know when a picture is going to be deemed "blog worthy" :)
So, I just had the most terrible thought about lemons the other night when I was whipping up one of my favorite alcholic beverages... vodka, water, and lemons. When I bought these lemons yesterday, instead of putting them in those little plastic baggies I put the lemons directly in the cart, then directly into the fridge. So I decided to wash one of the lemons off before plopping it in my drink. While I was washing this lemon off and I realized "OH MY GOD, I'VE NEVER WASHED A LEMON BEFORE... and there are probably lots of people that have touched my lemons before I bought them... then I put them in my drinks without a second thought... OH MY GOD!"
Then, I got to thinking that if I'm not washing my lemons, restaurants probably aren't either. And even worse, most of the time a bartender will just grab out a lemon with their bare hands (that's been sitting out for hours) and put it in your drink. Apparently people have actually studied this... here's an article about it. Here's the full blown scientific study. What they found was that 77% of the sampled lemons in the study had microbial growth caused by all sorts of bodily fluids.
Needless to say I probably won't be ordering these at my neighborhood bar without a little more scrutiny. Am I the only one that was out of the loop, or are you guys all washing your lemons? I'm so sorry to everyone who's ever enjoyed a vodka water at our home...
Kevin got back from his business trip to Oklahoma today, so it was definitely time for a home cooked meal. We've been trying to support only natural local or organic animal products (meats, dairy, etc.) and since most restaurants haven't quite caught on to this yet, Kevin ate pretty much like a vegan on his business trip.
For dinner tonight I cooked pork chops from my new birthday cookbook (pg 173), rice pilaf, and asparagus.
Oh, and here is a note my mom jotted in my birthday cookbook. I think I have the sweetest mom in the world.
A few years aago for Christmas my grandma gave me twelve coupons for margarita night at their house, and the margarita night tradition has carried on long after the coupons have been used up. God, I hope Kevin and I are this cool when we're their age. Heck, I hope we're still alive when at their age... my grandma just turned 81 (and she has her own facebook page!). Here's a picture of my lovely grandparents on Kevin and I's wedding day:
Kevin and I have been working very hard to only eat all natural and organic foods (especially animal products.. meats, dairies, cheeses, etc.), so instead of having my grandparents try to accommodate us, we decided to invite them over for dinner at our place.
Of course we had to carry on the margarita tradition, but just a few problems... no tequila, margarita mix, margarita glasses or even a blender. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. We do own a blender, but let's just say that I tried to blend up some chickpeas to make hummus a couple months ago, and after spending about 20 minutes trying to get the blender to do it, I discovered that mashing the chickpeas with my bare hands was more efficient.
So, it was off to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy a new blender. Usually I make these type of purchases online, but having only realized our margarita predicament yesterday, there was definitely no time for that. Luckily I found a great blog post on how to choose a blender. I mean who would write a blog post about blenders... oh wait..
It blended the ice for the margaritas in about 5 seconds. Incredible. And actually, the picture above is really just half of it. It came with a different attachment that goes on the motor that's a food processor. Oh the possibilities!
So maybe this Flip magic movie thing is just a tad addicting? I took some video at our family birthday party tonight and here's the magic video that it created:
For my birthday dinner my mom made an awesome meal from the Family Chef cook book she got me as one of my gifts. I started reading it immediately and can already tell them I'm going to love it. Isn't it perfect when you get presents that are complete surprises and are exactly what you want? My grandparents got me a zester and a gift card to Bed Bath and Beyond, and my parents got me The Family Chef cook book, a lemon squeezer, AND A GLOBAL KNIFE! My mom has started reading my blog and knew that I wanted one so my parents completely surprised me and got one.
I don't think there's a way to pose with a large knife
without looking creepy...
How cool does this thing look? I used it to cut a lemon
and it felt like slicing butter!
