Author Archives: Lauren

So a chicken gets dressed up for the ball…

Chicken meatballs.

Are like space.

They are my final frontier.  There is so much to explore with them and yet, I’ve only been so far as the moon.  Which is made of mozzarella.  Not green cheese.  Well maybe it gets moldy from time to time.

Anyway, it was an off-again-on-again rainy kind of day and it’s been kind of a tiring week, one of those weeks where I’ve been craving comfort foods all the time.  So far this week there’ve been hot dogs, barbecue, pizza, Hunan chicken and today, pasta.  Rigatoni.  With red sauce.  And chicken meatballs.

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Porky's Revenge: In Pictures

(bone-in pork shoulder roast)

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(lemon, spice mix and olive oil)

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(combine and marinate in a bag over night)

Then

(wrap tightly in tin foil and place on grill over medium heat; lower lid and cook about 4 hours)

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(barbecue pork roast!)

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It's not delivery, it's do it yourself!

Two things came into play this evening.  No, three.  1) I had leftover pepperoni in the fridge from making toast pizza. 2) It’s summer and I prefer to grill food whenever and wherever possible in the summer–I mean, I have grilled breakfast before.  I won’t turn on the stove if I don’t have too.  3) I really, really, really did not want to eat another burger.  Instead, I thought to myself, “Hey, self!  Let’s grill pizza for dinner instead.”  I figured I could pile it with veggies and low-moisture part skim mozzarella since, after all, we did have lunch at Bill’s and wanted something healthier but just as tasty as chili dogs for dessert.  So pizza!  Josh was all about it.  I mean, we are married for a reason.

So on the way home from Bill’s, we stopped at the store and stocked up on a few things–pizza sauce (Delallo’s was on sale), baby spinach, frozen pepper mix (Josh’s favorite) and a ball of frozen pizza dough.  While Josh and I do enjoy making our own pizza on a fairly regular basis, this would be the first time for either of us to really grill a pizza.  After leaving the dough ball on the counter to thaw for a few hours, and giving our appetites time to return, the moment was at hand. Continue reading

Eat at Bill's

So we didn’t really wake up until almost 10am this morning.  By the time I finished taking our dog Winston on a 2 mile morning walk, breakfast was pretty much a no-go.  So Josh and I each downed a bit of fruit and then pondered what to do for lunch.  I was already of the opinion that we should have hot dogs, because hey, I’ve been in a hot doggy kind of mood lately.  In lieu of trekking to the store, picking up what we’d need for do-it-yourself dogs (I mean, there’d have to be buns and peppers and Josh gets one kind of sausage and I get another and side dishes and eh), we decided on taking the dog for a nice jaunt over to Bill’s Hot Dog Stand in Ypsi.

Bill’s is…well, it’s a little yellow shack, really, on Michigan Ave in Ypsilanti (waaay far in Ypsi) around the corner from where I grew up.  Bill’s has been there…forever, pretty much.  My entire life anyway.  It’s an old school car-hop kinda place and they mean serious business.  They do hot dogs.  And root beer.  And that’s all they do.  Seriously.  You can only buy three things at Bill’s: hot dogs, homemade root beer and Ruffles chips.  And I will be damned if it is not the best root beer in at least the state, if not the entire western hemisphere.

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Olé! Dinner out at The Prickly Pear

The Prickly Pear is a restaurant on Main Street in Ann Arbor that serves southwestern cuisine.  Josh and I end up there about once a year, and apparently, we’re one of the few people we know who aren’t stark raving mad about the place.  To be honest, we think the food is okay but completely overpriced (and that is saying a lot in this town) and while completely acceptable, certainly not the best Mexican faire in town (not not just because it’s technically southwestern, not Mexican anyway).  But we go from time to time because we really want to try like it, and we like to give second chances.

One thing I will say is that Prickly Pear has fantastic homemade guacamole, and their tortilla chips are great; I wonder if they get them from Ann Arbor Tortilla?

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Sorry Nemo: Fish Tacos

Those who know me know that I…hate fish.  I don’t want to hate fish, but I do.  I don’t like the smell, I don’t like the texture.  I want to like it because it’s versatile and because that’s a whole arena of the culinary world that I don’t get to participate in.  Luckily, Josh does like fish, so from time to time we try out something new in the hope that maybe I’ll come around (I haven’t).

However, having only previously grilled tuna and salmon, this was my chance to experiment with whitefish.  We got a half pound filet from the store (I had been thinking tilapia, but we asked the fishmonger and she showed us a pretty, thin filet of whitefish that she said had great flavor and held up well.  Great flavor, maybe, I dunno, but it definitely didn’t hold up well) and some other staples: corn tortillas from the local Ann Arbor Tortilla Factory (that was Josh’s experimentation; I love corn tortillas but he’s pretty strictly a flour-only kind of guy), roma tomatoes and Serrano peppers for homemade salsa (we like ours spicy) and ripe avocados for homemade guacamole (which went excellently with the fresh limes we’d gotten from Eastern Market the previous week).

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This Hot Dog Thing Will Never End

Today, Tyler Florence did a cooking “class” via Twitter on “The Ultimate Chili Dog.”  The full recipe and an image (of, let me say,  an impressively giant chili dog) are available on his blog.

He’s using all-beef hot dogs, which I applaud, altho I do prefer mine to be uncured, and his chili is full of goodness: olive oil, onion, ground beef, ketchup, chili powder, mustard, thyme, garlic.  He tops the whole thing off with a homemade coleslaw.  I’ve often wondered about the coleslaw topping thing.  I think Josh used to get dogs topped with coleslaw at Red Hot Lovers but it’s just never been my thing.  I’m not a huge fan of coleslaw and I prefer it to be a side item rather than a topping for my hot dogs, burgers and pulled pork sammiches.  But that’s just me.

Anyway, this fantastic little series of tweets (who says Twitter is totally useless?  Right, me) also featured a recipe for homemade potato salad, which you can find at the bottom of the chili dog post.

Enjoy!  Follow Tyler on Twitter or check back on TylerFlorence.com every Friday for more classes.

Pasta!

Rigatoni and meatballs, to be specific.  Mmm meatballs.  You may have guessed that I enjoy meatballs.  Or perhaps not.  There may have been no clues at all…Anyway, below is a pictoral history of what went down:

The Sauce

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Tyler Florence is my hero

Tyler Florence, if you don’t know him, is a restauranteur and FoodNetwork chef extraordinaire.  He’s one of the few people still on FN that I love to watch–his recipes are great (I make quite a few of them, and none have disappointed) and he’s funny and very watchable to boot.

He’s also apparently on Twitter (yes, I’m a follower) and conducts a weekly cooking class via Twitter on Fridays.

Go to his site to find more– Tyler Florence: Free the Fork!

Brain Food Book Review of "Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China"

I’m pretty sure I stumbled upon this book while going through the recommendations section of Amazon.  It sounded interesting so I added it to my “books to read” notebook page that I keep in Evernote.  A few weeks later, I picked it up from the library.  It’s one girl’s tale of how she went back to her parents’ native China, attended a cooking course there and worked both as a cook in several extremely varied environments and as a food critic.  It also explores the current culinary culture in China and provides recipes for many of the dishes she talks about (!).

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SnackTime!

I like to snack, and I like healthy but delicious snacks.  So the other day at work, I made up this beautiful little concoction:

This is a delicious little yogurt parfait made with Fage 0% Greek yogurt.  Greek yogurt, if you’ve never had it, is much thicker than the yogurt we normally pick up at the store, because it’s strained in order to remove the whey.  The Fage yogurt has the consistency of say, warm cream cheese.  It’s comes plain, but I would never eat it like that.  It’s traditionally the base for tzaziki sauce, which is that great cucumber-dill sauce you often get on gyros or other Greek dishes.  Here, it’s flavored with a couple tablespoons of my grandmother’s homemade strawberry jam and topped with the crumbles from my last homemade granola bars and the last few strawberries from my trip to the farmer’s market. The combination of the sweet strawberries, the chocolate and the coconutty crunch of the granola was excellent, if I do say so myself.

Try it out, and customize it…use raspberries, peaches, blueberries, apricots…after all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  :-)

Culinary History Reading Group!

From the Motte & Bailey Used Books website:

This reading group began meeting at Motte & Bailey in July of 2009, reading books about any aspect of culinary history.  Books for the next meeting are determined at the end of each meeting, and members are encouraged to bring books to suggest or simply to show before the meeting. We meet the 3rd Wednesday of each month.

How exciting!

My dream is to one day have my very own chocolate river of delight

But until that day, I will just have to get by on the kindness of my husband (who brings me chocolates from my current all-time favorite chocolatier Schakolad) and good friends like my fellow foodie Brian, who just came back from three weeks in Europe (jealous?  Yes, completely) and brought me a bar (it’s actually 2 bars in one package) of delicious Belgian Côte d’Or Noir de Noir chocolate.  I love this chocolate for a couple reasons: one, it’s freaking delicious; two, I may be somewhat in love with the packaging because it’s entirely in French and, thanks to 5 years of French classes I am a bit of a Francophile (although, really, I’m in love with the Mediterranean as a whole, but France in particular).  Continue reading

A Morning at the Market

Eastern Market in Detroit, that is. Eastern Market is the largest historic market district in the nation, apparently.  I’ve been going there for several years now and it’s always fantastic.  It’s a great place to get plants, flowers, fresh produce, cheeses, Josh’s favorite brand of Mexican chorizo, spices, cheap meat, fresh made barbecue and to sit out, hang out, and eat at any of the great restaurants lining the streets.  We go about once a month and stock up and it’s always a good time.  The stall vendors are loud, colorful and friendly and much of the food is locally grown (and some even organic).  Continue reading