🥬 Shredded tofu with mushrooms and edamame. 3/11/20

Posted on March 11, 2020 by Beebamom

New recipe! We try a new recipe by Melissa Clark that I found on the NYTimes cooking site. The firm tofu is drained and pressed and then shredded on a box grater. It gets mixed with some sautéed mushrooms, onions, garlic, ginger, a hot chile, and edamame. The sauce that you mix in at the end of cooking consists of soy sauce, dry sherry, lime juice, and sesame oil. We garnish our plates with chopped peanuts, cilantro, and sesame seeds. It is not much of a looker and next time we will make more sauce and add a bit of sweetness to the sauce but there will be a next time for this dinner!

Shredded tofu with seared mushrooms and edamame

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🐓 Chicken enchiladas. 3/10/20

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Beebamom

Have some chicken left over from that too-good-to-pass-up deal on rotisserie chicken at Costco? A quick and easy dinner to make is chicken enchiladas. I made a mixture of onions and garlic (sautéed first), pulled chicken, corn, and black beans with some Herdez salsa verde and cumin for the stuffing. John put 6 corn tortillas sprayed with olive oil in the oven to soften them up. I then rolled my mixture into the tortillas covered them with some more salsa verde and baked them for about 20 minutes. John put some feta on his and I guess you could put some melting cheese inside the enchilada as well. Easy! Tasty!

So far in this week of “no travel” we have visited the Puglia region of Italy and Mexico through their cuisines. No doubt there are other places we can pretend to go while we wait out this contagion.

Chicken enchiladas and small salad

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🥬 Orecchiette with broccolini. 3/9/20

Posted on March 9, 2020 by Beebamom

Orecchiette with broccolini is the first of our lament dinners to Italy and our trip which should have started on 3/10/20. Being in the higher risk pool for the coronavirus John and I are spending a lot of time sitting around the house and walking around the block instead of looking at the great art of Italy and eating its fabulous foods.

This dish comes from the region of Puglia which is on the east coast of Italy. Food is very much a regional affair in Italy. What you might eat in Puglia is not what you would eat in Tuscany. Usually this pasta is made with broccoli rabe which is much more bitter than broccolini so I found our dinner a little sweet. But it is pasta! It ranks high in my book regardless.

Orecchiette (little ears) with broccolini

This is super simple to make. Blanch the broccolini in the boiling pasta water and then give it a dunk in ice water. Put the pasta in to cook. While that is going on, sauté the garlic and bell pepper. Then add the broccolini and warm it through. Save some pasta water before you drain the orecchiette. Pour the pasta into the veg, add some pasta water and olive oil, and you are done. Garnish with finishing oil and a little parmesan if you like.

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😃 Weekly Menu. March 8-14, 2020

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Beebamom

This week I am featuring three pasta dishes because we were supposed to be leaving on Tuesday for three weeks in Italy. Our plan was to start in Milan and work southwest from there going to Parma, Cremona, Modena and Bologna. Oh, the food we were going to eat! We were also stopping in Bari to celebrate our daughter’s birthday and then over to Naples  for the real deal pizza. Then we would end up in Rome with its wonderful churches and ancient ruins, not to mention some pretty fabulous cacio e pepe. But the coronavirus has upended our plans and we can only hope that someday we might be able to go again. Sigh.

Here are eight dinners we will be picking seven of to eat. I hope you will be cooking for your family or just for yourself this week.



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🍤 Shrimp and Grits with Asparagus 3/7/20

Posted on March 7, 2020 by Beebamom

I looked back through my posts and found that we had not made shrimp and grits since 2016. I guess somehow it fell out of favor. It was delicious with the perfectly seared shrimp (by John) and creamy polenta (also by John) working exceptionally well together. My contribution was asparagus, the first of the season for us. When you have not eaten asparagus for months and months it tastes especially good!

Shrimp and grits with asparagus

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🥬 Grilled portobello mushroom and cole slaw. 3/6/20

Posted on March 6, 2020 by Beebamom

We had temperatures as high as 80F this week so it made us think of grilling something for dinner. John marinated the mushrooms in balsamic vinegar, lemon, oil, garlic powder, and fresh rosemary and then cooked them on a hot grill. He toasted the buns as well. I was busy in the kitchen in the meantime sautéing some onions and making a celery seed cole slaw. Easy dinner that reminded us that it’s almost spring and summer is not far behind.

Grilled portobello mushroom with onions and tomatoes on a grilled bun with cole slaw

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🐟 Sea bass with chickpea purée and parsley sauce. 3/5/20

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Beebamom

Let’s see…for this dinner we used a food processor, immersion blender, a pot, a pan, and a roasting tray. What a lot of equipment! It is a very wonderful thing that John likes to do the dishes!

We got some Chilean sea bass at Whole Foods. John took care of it—taking off the skin, pulling out random bones, marinating, and cooking it to the right temperature. It was very delicious. For my part, I made the chickpea purée for under the fish, and a parsley sauce for on top. I also sautéed some zucchini with onions and garlic.  Dinner was really good but we need to find a simpler preparation!

Roasted Chilean sea bass with chickpea purée and parsley sauce served with zucchini

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🥬 Black bean tacos and Texas caviar. 3/4/20

Posted on March 4, 2020 by Beebamom

Black bean tacos and Texas caviar have a lot of components that need chopping but there is very little cooking. I take a short-cut with the Texas caviar and use half of a can of drained Rotel and dump the other half in the black beans. Chopping up tomatoes is not one of my favorite things to do.  In addition to the Rotel the Texas caviar has black eyed peas, corn, carrots, celery, bell pepper, white onion, and green onion all in uniform size. I use plenty of cumin and some garlic powder, a dash of vinegar, some of my super salad dressing, salt, and a bunch of sriracha to season the vegetables.

John chars the tortillas over the stove’s open flame and we garnish our black bean tacos with cabbage, salsa verde, green onions, and yogurt crema. After you eat this you feel good about yourself for having so many servings of vegetables!

NOTE: For a vegan version substitute or omit yogurt

Black bean tacos and Texas caviar

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🐓 Comfort Food. 3/3/20

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Beebamom

There is a lot to be worried about at the moment so a plate of comfort food seems like the right dinner. For us that is pan-roasted chicken breast, rutabagas and broccoli. It doesn’t make the worries go away but surely is good.

Pan roasted chicken, Instant Pot mashed rutabagas, broccoli

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🥬 Leftovers: Spiced red lentils 3/2/20

Posted on March 2, 2020 by Beebamom

We have a lot of spiced red lentils left over from last week and a container of rice. So I pick up some more broccoli from the store and we have an almost no-work dinner. These lentils, whose major claim to fame is the addition of butternut squash, are really not spicy at all. Perhaps it is the difference between the words spiced and spicy. Spiced means containing spices while spicy conjures up a blast of heat in the mouth. John and I made up for the lack of spiciness with a liberal application of sriracha.

Spiced red lentils with rice and broccoli

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