Lamb and salads. 7/13/19

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Beebamom

In my ongoing attempt to use up what foods we have in our freezer, tonight we had some boneless leg of lamb (left over from Passover) with an embellished cole slaw (leftover from last night) and a couscous Mediterranean salad.

John had prepped the lamb to be sous vide and then frozen it. So he just needed to defrost it and sous vide it at 133F. After that he cooked it briefly on the grill.

Lamb taking its whirlpool bath

I added some additional cabbage, carrot, onion, and dressing to our leftover cole slaw and also made a Mediterranean couscous salad. It was in the 90’s today but we mostly kept the A/C off. We are just trying to keep our carbon footprint smaller.

Boneless leg of lamb, cole slaw, Mediterranean couscous salad

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Weekly menu 7/14 – 7/20/19

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Beebamom

John and I are celebrating our 47th wedding anniversary this week on Wednesday. We are going up to Healdsburg, Ca on Tuesday to a Michelin 3-star restaurant for a tasting menu and imagining that it will be wonderful. We will be back on Wednesday and get back to our usual routine.

Weekly Menu  7/14 -7/20/2019


 

Weekly Menu  7/14 -20/19

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Grilled chicken with BBQ sauce. 7/12/19

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Beebamom

John grilled some boneless, skinless chicken  thighs putting BBQ sauce on them at the very end which gave them a slight char. If you put it on from the get-go you end up with burnt chicken. Since it was around 90 degrees here today we wanted to do as much cooking outside as possible. I suggested we microwave the tater tots a bit and then put them on the grill in one of those perforated pans. They turned out crispy but a few got a little charred.

In the meantime I made some yummy cole slaw using my little mandoline to shred the cabbage, carrots, and onion. It is just your typical mayo, vinegar, celery seed, and whatever I think will make it taste better kind of cole slaw. John gave it the thumbs up.

Grilled chicken thighs with BBQ sauce, tater tots, homemade cole slaw

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Warm night, cool dinner (vegan!). 7/11/19.

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Beebamom

It is starting to get toasty again so what better than Italian toast with garden tomatoes and basil, garlic and onion? Dinner consisted in part of crostini that were the essence of summer.

Toast rubbed with garlic and then topped with chopped tomato, onion, basil, and EVOO

Also on the menu was “Best Gazpacho” adapted from the NYT Cooking site. Except for making toast, there was no cooking tonight!

Gazpacho with onion, tomato, cilantro, and EVOO garnish

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Stretching our food budget. 7/10/19

Posted on July 11, 2019 by Beebamom

Yesterday John worked at his office which meant over an hour commute home.  So often on these days the original plans for dinner go out the window and we pretty much just scrounge around in the refrigerator figuring out something interesting to eat. We had enough leftover beef stew maybe for a lunch but not enough for dinner.

Here’s what we had left of our original beef stew – one piece of meat, a couple of potato pieces, lots of carrots, not much celery, and plenty of gravy.

Leftover beef stew

I still had some of the small new potatoes and celery. So while the pot of leftover stew was heating up I cut up and cooked a handful of small potatoes and a couple of stalks of celery in the microwave and put them in the pot. I also had a four inch piece turkey sausage. So I cut that up and let the whole thing cook together for 15 minutes.

For serving I toasted a piece of bread and put it in the the bottom of each bowl and then ladled my Franken-stew on top. There was enough that John even had two helpings. The turkey sausage was a little weird. I think I could have opened a can of chickpeas and stuck them in instead. I’ll remember that for next time.

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Instant Pot Beef Stew. 7/9/19

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Beebamom

I am on a rampage to try to uncluttered our freezer! I had a hard time finding space for my three containers of spaghetti sauce.  We have a side by side refrigerator and there are five shelves in the freezer. Our daughter has co-opted two of these so I am left with three measly shelves. It doesn’t help that John likes to save everything! He has turkey stock from Thanksgiving and a large container of what he calls “carnitas goo!” So I suggested this week we use up our boneless beef ribs and leftover boneless leg of lamb.

Instant Pot beef stew

Using the Instant Pot makes beef stew a snap and does not heat up the kitchen much. John browns the meat in large chunks and then cuts it up afterwards. (Actually I wish he would cut the pieces smaller.) I cut up and dump in the veg – onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, parsley, and garlic. John makes a bouquet garni of spices and orange peel. We use red wine, a can of tomatoes, and beef stock for the liquid. We set the Pot to cook for 18 minutes. Afterwards, depending on how hungry we are, we either release the pressure right away, let it come down on its own part way and then release it, or just let it release pressure naturally. John thickens the sauce with some cornstarch slurry.

This is a good stew and very easy to make. So now I have a little more space in the freezer and after lamb on Saturday a little more. If only I could prompt John to use up the carnitas goo!

 

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Vegan/vegetarian grilling. 7/8/19

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Beebamom

It is summer and time for firing up the grill and having delicious burgers. Portobello mushrooms take the place of meat in tonight’s healthy grilled dinner!

After marinating the burger-sized portobello caps in oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic powder for a half an hour John put the mushrooms on the grill. They cooked for about 14 minutes total, 8 minutes on the cap side and 6 minutes on the gill side.

Meanwhile I was preparing the toppings for our burgers. First some caramelized onions.

Onions getting sweet and brown

Then an array of other toppings, spinach, sliced tomato, and feta cheese. John also opted for some whole grain mustard. NOTE: for a vegan version omit feta cheese!

Tomato slices, feta cheese, and spinach

A little earlier I whipped up some broccoli salad in a sweet and tangy celery seed dressing to accompany our burgers. When dinner was over John said, “Dinner was great! Let’s have this again.” Music to my vegetable-loving ears!

Portobello mushroom burger with caramelized onions, tomato slices, feta cheese, and spinach served with broccoli salad

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Shrimp scampi with corn and asparagus succotash. 7/7/19

Posted on July 8, 2019 by Beebamom

John did a great job cooking the shrimp. It came out rosy pink with that snap as you bite into them and then the slightly toothsome inside. We decided to double the sauce because we were putting the shrimp scampi on toast and the bread would absorb a lot of liquid.

My vegetable came out less well. It was mostly the fault of using frozen corn instead of fresh. It came out starchy and mushy. The asparagus was fine and I also used a shallot and some poblano chile. It’s a promising dish but it needs a better corn ingredient.

Shrimp scampi on toast with corn and asparagus succotash

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Weekly Menu. 7/7 – 7/13/2019

Posted on July 7, 2019 by Beebamom

It seems that we have a hard time following our weekly menu all the way to the end of the week. I have packed a couple of items on Friday and Saturday of next week that I know John will like and he will be more willing to make. We’ll see. I am the one who often whines that I don’t feel like cooking by Saturday.

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My favorite spaghetti dish. 7/6/19

Posted on July 7, 2019 by Beebamom

Since it is a long weekend I decided to make up a new batch of spaghetti sauce flavored with ground beef. John bought enough ground beef for us to have a hamburger meal plus at least four pasta dishes.

Starting my pasta sauce is seasoned ground beef browned in olive oil. After taking the beef out of the pan I saute the onions, dried oregano, garlic, chile flakes, and tomato paste and deglaze the pan with red wine. Then I add the ground beef back in along with a large can of San Marzano tomatoes, a regular sized can of tomato sauce and and one of petite chopped tomatoes and some fresh tomatoes that I have peeled. It all cooks for an hour or so and then it is ready to top our whole grain spaghetti.

A couple of hints: season everything along the way and use more oregano than you think you should. (I accidentally dumped too much in once and the sauce came out great!)

Meat sauce and some of its ingredients

After John put the al dente pasta in a colander I quickly grabbed the pasta pot and added a couple of cups worth of the spaghetti sauce. He put the drained spaghetti into this pot and  Icooked the sauce and the pasta together adding a bit of the reserved pasta water.

We cooked 8 ounces of spaghetti and it was enough for John, me, and our daughter for dinner. The sauce was really good plus I have 3 additional containers in the freezer for future dinners.

Whole grain spaghetti with a meaty tomato sauce

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