“They’ve jammed the radar!”
That headline’s a reference to Spaceballs, by the way, if you didn’t recognize it. And if you didn’t recognize it, shame on you. Your penance shall be sitting down immediately and watching this national treasure of a film—while you’re waiting for this jam to cook down, that is.
So I’ll be up front here. I am not a domestic goddess of any sort. I’m barely a domestic imp. I don’t sew–I can, but I don’t and I don’t have any desire to. I clean but not nearly as much as I should. I don’t really decorate. My gardening skills and interests are minimal. I don’t can. (That sentence looks so wrong, by the way.) I don’t bake my own bread. And I know those things seem kind of odd, seeing as how I do cook a great deal and I’ll even make my own candy, chocolate, oreos and now I’m working on Snickers bars. But I dunno. Canning doesn’t really appeal to me and seems like quite a bit of work for an end result that’s not chocolate. But I do like jam, and I like it minimally processed (as I prefer all foods to be, except Taco Bell, which gets an exception because it’s not really food anyway). I don’t like jelly though. I guess you could say that I’m not ready for this jelly. (No? No good? Well they can’t all be winners). But I do love jam, especially stirred into some plain Greek yogurt with some chocolate chips and walnuts—that’s a winning breakfast right there, my friends. Raspberry jam is awesome. But strawberry jam is awesomer still. Because I love strawberries so, so much. It’s my second favorite flavor next to chocolate, and right before “barbecue.” And it’s June! Fresh strawberries abound cheaply. Take advantage of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Farm Share Goodies: Stinging Nettles
Oh yeah, you read that right.
Our farm share started up again–finallly! One of the best days of my year is the day that I can start picking up our produce box from Needle Lane Farms. This year has the added bonus of us being able to pick up our box at the Depot Town Farmer’s Market in Ypsi on Saturdays, which I love, being that I love a 1 minute drive or 10 minute walk from Depot Town. Love. It. Also, I appreciate local organizations giving local love to Ypsi.
So yeah, last Saturday was a banner day. Not only had we just come back from our trip to Alaska, but I was all geared up to make my own food and the arrival of the farm share was the culinary equivalent of choirs of angels heralding the dawn. Well, close anyway. I was prepared for the usual late spring suspects: the garlic scapes, the radishes, the lettuces, the rainbow colored Swiss chard. But once again, Needle Lane blew me away and introduced me to something I had never even considered being a possibility:
stinging nettles. Read the rest of this entry »
Well Ain’t That Some Fancy Corn
The children of the corn give this two thumbs up
It’s officially summer here. It’s sunny, it’s 80 degrees at 11am in the morning, my farm share is starting next week (!) and my husband can barely stand to go outside. Yep, officially summer.
Every summer I seem to have a meal that I make on a regular basis, far more than anything else. When I was 15, it was grilled chicken and rice. Like every day of summer vacation. Last year, it was hamburgers. I seem to be coming into my groove when making burgers now. It may sound weird, but ground beef brisket is the way to go, mixed in with a bit of ground pork if you’re of a mind, topped with a good flavorful cheese and onions that have been diced and cooked in butter with some dried herbs, and some guacamole. But this year, this year my summer is apparently going to be embodied by simple evening meals of some good old grilled beef hot dogs and sausages. Simple, quick, tasty, easy…perfect for hot weather, heavy on the sodium but light on my wallet. But sometimes I feel the need to kick things up a notch and instead of slaving over an elaborate main dish, I instead serve the sausages simple and grilled (with some onions and peppers, of course) and pair them up with an awesome side dish instead. Enter the corn. Read the rest of this entry »
Meat and Potatoes: the Green Edition
You know, I could wax on at length about this dinner and how it was all inspired by this recipe find of spinach artichoke hummus from Gimme Some Oven. I could tell you how I needed an end-of-the-week pick-me-up, healthy yet tasty, and how the mention of pork chops at work (which happens a lot more than you’d think) made me think I could combine my love of pork with my love of spinach, artichokes and hummus and sure it would be weird but it would also be awesome. I could tell you how easy this meal was to pull together, even though I had absolutely no idea what to do with the potatoes even as they were cooking; I just knew that I wanted them. I could tell you how fantastic thick center-cut pork chops are and how they’re even better stuffed with wedges of Cordobes sheep’s milk cheese, or how good potatoes are with meat drippings poured over them, or how surprisingly well spinach-artichoke-hummus can be smothered over said porkchops, cheese and potatoes.
I could do all of those things. But I will let the pictures speak for themselves: Read the rest of this entry »
Monday Night Pantry Pasta Pretty Damn Quick
uh yes please
I picked out glasses yesterday afternoon. Prescription sunglasses, to be precise. I can’t really tell you what they look like though. I’m not even really sure. That’s the problem with having to try on glasses when you don’t wear contacts and are otherwise mostly blind. But hey, in about 3-4 weeks when they come in, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised! Or horrified. We’ll see. Ha. We’ll see. Get it? Yeah.
So after that, I walked down to Kerrytown and waited for Josh to pick me up. It’s after five at this point. Then we have to go get the dog because yes, my dog goes to doggy daycare once a week so he can run around and socialize like the wild beast that he is. Of course, to get him, we have to drive through all the construction down on Main Street by Stadium and then once we’ve got him, we have to stop at the bank. And then drive through rush-hour traffic through town because there’s no way we’re hitting I-94 at this hour and by the time we get home, settled, mail on the table, shoes off the feet, bathroom break taken care of, dog fed, etc, etc, etc, we’re looking at almost 7pm and time to make dinner and I’m starving. I also have a lot of freelance work to do—videos to edit, DVDs to burn, that sort of thing–and don’t want to be on my feet all night cooking. And then there’s that nagging little voice that says, “Screw cooking; order a pizza from Aubree’s. With breadsticks. Don’t forget my breadsticks.” Read the rest of this entry »
It hasn’t even been a full week in our new house yet and already we’ve spent more than a little bit updating things–the cable, the washer and most notably, the oven.
I have a new oven.
Do you know what that’s like? It’s like Papa having a brand new bag, that’s what it’s like.
It’s beautiful—all shiny and black and stainless steal. The oven at our old apartment was a trustworthy thing; while I am not a fan of electric stovetops, the oven got hot quickly and stayed that way. When we moved into the house on Saturday, we knew the stove (gas) worked but that the oven didn’t. So despite my fear-of-change-driven emotional need for brownies, I had to sit and wait until a new stove was ordered and delivered. But I could still use the stove, and I did. It was a bit odd changing over to a gas range from an electric one—things heat up so fast! Lovely.
The new oven (I haven’t named it yet, but I might–any suggestions?) was delivered yesterday. Josh decided he was going to hook it up himself. This required a trip to the hardware store to get a connector-thingy. Me, I was all twinge-y with excitement, holding the flashlight while Josh fiddled around behind the stove (which was very shiny—did I mention it was shiny? I like shiny things). I had it all planned out—first I was going to make a chicken tomato sauté with chicken breasts I had acquired from the store that very afternoon for this very purpose, as well as some plump round cherry tomatoes, garlic and balsamic vinegar. Then I was going to make a super-quick side dish of tricolor couscous and steamed spinach. And then there’d be cookies. Chocolate chip, of course, with maybe some oatmeal and I could nearly taste the chewy delici—
“It’s not going to work,” said Josh.
Well of course it’s going to work, I thought, oatmeal and chocolate go great together. Read the rest of this entry »
Apri-can: Apricot Crumbcake
I found a recipe in Cooking Light for Strawberry Jam Crumb Cake. It just sounds scrumptious, doesn’t it? It looks pretty good too. I have the week off and you know I can’t go more than a few hours without getting bored and baking something. My immediate thought was to make cookies, and then brownies, and then I thought that maybe I should try and wean myself just a little bit off my dependence on the black gold that is chocolate and try something new. And I’ve never made a crumb cake before (as least, I don’t think so, and if I ever did, I guess it was so terrible that I blocked it out) so I figured, why not?
Of course, I didn’t have any strawberry jam because what fun is baking if you actually have all the ingredients you need? I did have apricot preserves, though, since I’d needed it for my spicy apricot chicken. Works for me. Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, and I guess it can be healthy too. Can be.
Anyway, I was inspired by this chicken wing recipe and decided to play around with a sweet-and-spicy chicken recipe myself. The store I stopped at this morning didn’t seem to have sriracha sauce specifically, so I went with the chili paste, which I’m sure I’ll be using pretty often because it smells great.
And let’s face it–we can all use a light meal now and again. Especially in these heady days between Christmas, Christmas, more Christmas and New Year’s. So this dish, bundled up with some fresh guacamole and a delicate side of lemony green beans (blanch green beans in boiling salted water, then drop into ice water, then pan-fry in a sauce of a tablespoon of butter, a half tablespoon of olive oil, lemon zest, salt, pepper and herbs) was a welcome breath of delicious, moist, tender air. I know what you’re thinking: moist is a creepy word. Yeah, it is.
But the chicken will make you forget all that. The chicken is here to help. Read the rest of this entry »
Aaaaaaaaaand we’re back.
It was an odd weekend, really, this past weekend. There was very little cooking and no baking. Indeed, a pall of sadness hung over our apartment. Poor Josh had to have all four wisdom teeth removed at once and…well, let’s just say, he’s seen better weekends. And while I was reasonably healthy myself and not even a fraction as miserable as Josh, I tried not to cook too much because I felt sort of like a meanie making delicious food when he was subsisting on soft oatmeal and light Gatorade.
But today, as Josh slowly makes his way back to health and normalcy, I am slowly making my way back into the kitchen. I baked a super easy cake recipe I found on AllRecipes.com, which yes, I did choose because it didn’t require butter and lazy girl that I am, I didn’t feel like trekking to the store to get more. What’s even more shocking about that is the fact I was nearly out of butter to begin with. But no matter! I experimented and the cake looks good but as of the time of this writing, I have not tried it yet.. Read the rest of this entry »
I got a notice that POM Wonderful was having a recipe contest and I thought, “Self, we’ve never entered a recipe contest before. We should give it a shot.” Self said, “We’ll never win.” And I replied, “Way to be defeatist, Self. The point is that it’s an excuse to be creative.” Self: “Since when do we need an excuse?” Me: “Since you started screwing with my chi.” Self: “Oh okay.” So we shook on it. Mentally.
So now that Self and I were in agreement (which happens much less often than you might imagine), I started thinking about various winter meals we could make with pomegranate. I considered roasting a chicken basted with a pomegranate compound butter. Iactually did that one, too. It wasn’t bad. But it didn’t make me go, “Mmmmmmmmmmmm” with my head tilted back and my mouth wide open slouched in a chair like Homer Simpson. I also thought about stuffing a pork tenderloin with spinach and goat cheese and cooking it in a pomegranate glaze. Haven’t done that yet…but probably will, because thinking about it now has me drooling a little bit, I’ll admit it. Read the rest of this entry »
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