Tag Archives: american

TEDTalk: Jennifer 8 Lee

Josh sent me a delightful TED Talk by New York Times journalist Jennifer 8. Lee all about “Chinese” food in America.  It’s not only extremely informative but witty and entertaining as well.  It’s 16 minutes or so, but worth watching it all.

My favorite part? Learning about French and Italian Chinese food!


 

Meal in a pot: baked mac and cheese

I think there’s one basic truth in this world that we can all agree upon: macaroni and cheese is freaking awesome.  It’s like pizza-even when it’s bad, it’s still macaroni and cheese.

There’s a de facto rule in my family that every holiday meal must contain at least one pan of baked macaroni and cheese.  To not have it is a sin against God.  And taste.  And delicious flavor.

I do have a go-to recipe for mac-and-cheese that I like to pull out for such meals, and it never fails.  But tonight, I was on my own and I wanted to make something that would a) use up some leftover chicken from last night’s sammiches and 2)have all my carbs, veggies and protein in one pot.

I ended up combining influence from my usual recipe and from this baked penne with cheddar and leeks recipe from Bon Appetit, and threw in a few other things I had on hand. Continue reading

Nobody gets left behind: leftovers

What I do with leftovers:

From the milk-roasted chicken on Sunday, I had two bone-in chicken breasts left over.  What to do with them?  Hm.  Think.  Think Think Think.

Well, I also had some Spanish chorizo I picked up at Eastern Market on Saturday as well.  Chorizo is a spicy, smoked pork sausage that comes in many varieties.  I also had leftover chopped green and red bell peppers bagged up in the freezer, and some fresh spinach and portabella mushrooms left from Josh making pizza for himself for dinner.  And I had rice.  Well that all sounds pretty good.  Continue reading

There’s a Wocket in My Pizza Pocket

You know, I tried really hard to think of a witty lead in for this blog post, but I’ve got nothing.  I blame it on Monday.  We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.  [Edit: Thankfully, Sophia saved me with a hilarious new title that you can read above.]

But anyway, tonight we made calzones. Partly out of a want of pizza on my part, partly out of a guiltiness that I pasted a calzone recipe into my Evernote months ago and had yet to get around to making it, and partly because Busch’s has ground sirloin on sale. I figured, heck, at home we already had cheese, peppers, onions, garlic, spinach and mushrooms and tomatoes…all we had to do is pick up the beef and some pizza dough.  AND we–and by “we” I mean “I”–could make enough for tonight and tomorrow’s lunch.  Genius.  Of course, once at the store, a few other items got added to the list, mostly due to Josh’s deep-seated love for pepperoni and pizza sauce.  And then it came down to the crust.

What to use?

I mean, at this point, I’m feeling too lazy to make my own pizza crust.  And by “this point,” I mean “I am always too lazy to make my own pizza crust.”  But Busch’s only had (that I know of) frozen pizza crusts, and we didn’t want to wait for a dough ball to thaw.  Nor did we really trust the canned Pillsbury pizza crust (don’t get me wrong–I am not a food snob (much) and and I have made more than my share of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, biscuits and donuts but pizza dough?  In a can?   For some reason I won’t go that far).  And we didn’t want to venture to another store to get fresh pizza dough.  So I did the only reasonable thing: I picked up a couple of pie crusts.  Pillsbury.  :-)  My reluctance to embrace pizza-in-a-can also does not extend to ready-made-roll-out-pie crusts.  I’m a complex creature.  There’s no point in trying to figure it out. Continue reading

Pretend you’re a chicken…parmesan

I just want to state for the record that I’ve never made chicken parmesan and I didn’t actually look for a recipe for it before making this, but for the life of us, Josh and I just could not decide on what to have for dinner.  I mulled over what we had in the house (a thawed chicken breast, a bunch of groceries from the farm share) and thought at first of doing a chicken paillard with a tomatillo sauce and maybe some potatoes on the side…but then I thought, well we have tomatoes too…how about a tomato sauce…and we have mozzarella…we could top it with that….and then I realized I was basically thinking of chicken parmesan but without so much parmesan…So I figured, I can just throw something together and we’ll see how it  comes out!

Fake Chicken Parmesan Continue reading

ABC and Schako-lattes

For dinner tonight, Josh and I decided we would go where no man has gone befo–no, wait, scratch that, we decided to go to Arbor Brewing Company in downtown Ann Arbor, where many a man has been before.  But not me.  I’ve heard good things about it, but it’s not usually on my radar of places to go.  I thought today would be a good time to check it out.

Having skipped lunch, we were having an early dinner (4:30ish) so we beat the Saturday evening crowd and since it was a lovely 81 degrees Fahrenheit, we decided to eat outside (“we” being “me” and “Josh grudgingly agreeing because he knows how much I love hot weather and how little of it I get in Michigan and besides, there was a breeze and thanks to the bevy of tall buildings on E Washington, we’d be in the shade anyway”).  The weather was lovely, the sidewalk seating was great, the staff was excellent and the menu was modest but delicious, which works out well for me because sometimes too many choices is a terrible thing.  Like the cereal aisle of a grocery store.  How can I possibly make up my mind?  More on that another time. Continue reading

Home, home on the range…something, something buffalo

So I’ve never tried bison before.  I eat….less meat than the average person, and generally only the basic four that I grew up with, in order: chicken, cow, turkey, pork.  No fish (I try to like it, but I don’t), no woodland creatures, etc.  I did try lamb once, but wasn’t a huge fan—it was a roast, and it was kind of greasy in my opinion, and just wasn’t great enough to overcome my guilt about eating a baby animal.

But I digress.  So I’ve never eaten bison, but I’ve heard good things about the taste, and the nutritional value (less fat, for instance, than beef), and like all Americans, especially those who shop at *cough*Whole Foods*cough*or Trader Joe’s*cough, I am pretty interested in healthful eating.  So when Josh found these delicious looking buns at Busch’s the other day (we’re always looking for the perfect hamburger buns and haven’t had a whole lot of luck), we figured that we’d grill today, the Friday before the 4th of July, since it’s gorgeous out and we’re both off work anyway.  We like to use grass-fed beef because, frankly, it tastes better, and while we were waiting at the meat counter in Whole Foods, I couldn’t help but notice the bison, just sitting there looking delicious and figured now was the time!  I convinced Josh eventually to agree.  We bought a pound and returned home, dizzy with excitement. Continue reading