Menu ends up being a little chicken heavy at the beginning of the week due to the air conditioning breaking and a substitute meal being inserted on 9/30/18.
-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
-
Join 383 other subscribers
Meta
A/C broke!! Picnic supper 9/30/18
Right now we are in the desert of Southwest Utah. Even though it is the very end of September the temperatures are still in the mid-90’s. Our air conditioning decides to stop working today. So throw the chicken dinner idea out the window. We are having a picnic in the hot kitchen.
We go to the grocery store and roam around for a while (because it is air conditioned there!) looking for something to take home and eat. We decide to get something microwave-able and a prepared salad. We end up with some ribs and potato salad. I will make broccoli salad at home. This meal is neither Dining Lite nor particularly nutritious. Oh well, desperate times call for desperate measures! (This is such a first-world problem!!)
-
BBQ ribs, potato salad, broccoli salad
Posted in American, Easy, Pork, take-out, Vegetables
Tagged broccoli, Potato salad, ribs
Leave a comment
From Ho-hum to Banh mi Burger! 9/29/18
You can make your burger extra-ordinary with a few simple ingredients. To give it an exotic taste this is all you have to do. (This is by no means authentic.)
Banh mi burger
Starting at the bottom you have a toasted roll followed by a mayo and Tabasco schmear. Then there are pickled carrots, onions, and cucumbers. Next layer is the pate. Since we are taking shortcuts we use a thin slice of liverwurst. Then comes the grilled hamburger patty. On top of the burger we put pickled jalapeño and a bunch of cilantro. The pickled jalapeño is very hot straight out of the jar so I add some oil and sugar to tone it down.
I love hamburgers in almost any form and this take on a Vietnamese banh mi is a real winner. I am thinking about what ethnicities to try next. Italian patty with tomato sauce and mozzarella? Middle Eastern kabob? Taco burger? …
Posted in Beef, Grilling, Kitchen tips, Recipes, Vegetables, Vietnamese
Tagged banh mi, cilantro, Hamburger, jalapeno
Leave a comment
Shrimp scampi with spaghetti. 9/28/18
This dinner is so, so good. If I had paid for it in a restaurant I would have no complaints. I think the key here is to sauté the shrimp tails in the wine first to get extra flavor. While John sautes the shells in white wine, the water heats up for the spaghetti, and I finely chop up some onion and garlic. Out come the shells and in go the onions and garlic. Spaghetti goes in to cook. A minute or so before the pasta is ready John adds the shrimp to the pan. When the spaghetti is almost done he reserves a cup of pasta water and drains the spaghetti. Spaghetti goes in with the shrimp. I cook them together for a minute or so adding some pasta water to make a sauce. When the shrimp are cooked through and the pasta is al dente I add the parsley. Correct seasoning and I am done. Yum!
Based on a New York Times Cooking recipe.
Shrimp scampi with spaghetti
Posted in Easy, Kitchen tips, Pasta, pescatarian, Recipes, Shellfish
Tagged garlic, shrimp, Spaghetti
Leave a comment
Vegetarian dinner in two acts. 9/27/18
Tonight’s dinner, sort of fattoush and dal, I serve in two courses because John does the dishes and I want to cut down on his work. This way instead of four bowls we only need two. He says he likes to wash up which I find unfathomable. By keeping the mess down I figure he will keep on wanting to do the dishes.
Note: Vegans should omit feta and yogurt
First course is kind of fattoush. It is very difficult to find decent pita here in St. George, UT so I omit the bread and just go with lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and feta in the salad. It is simply dressed with some good olive oil and vinegar and seasoned well.
Tomato, cucumber , lettuce, and feta salad
The second course are lentils cooked in vegetable stock and flavored with onions, garlic, and ginger. The idea is that they should come out somewhat soupy. A dollop of yogurt and a drizzle of olive oil finishes off the dish.
Red lentils with yogurt
Posted in Easy, Legumes, Middle Eastern, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Tagged ginger, lentils, Salad
Leave a comment
Sous vide, grilled steak. 9/26/18
Tonight’s dinner is simple. Cook the steak in the immersion circulator set at 125 F. Microwave the potato halves. Put them both on a hot grill briefly. Add spinach to the plate. I really love how this method of cooking meat gives you perfectly medium rare. The grilling gives you the bit of char you want.
Rib eye steak pieces with grilled baking potato and spinach
Posted in American, Beef, Easy, Grilling, Vegetables
Tagged baked potato, sous vide, spinach, Vegetables
1 Comment
Freezer favorite plus menu. 9/25/1
Even though I have my gimpy knee we go ahead and take the trip we had planned to Utah. I request a wheelchair to get to the gate because I am not supposed to put much weight on it for a couple of days. We zoom through security and pre-board but it is definitely not worth being in a wheelchair.
By the time we get through the horrendous Las Vegas traffic and up to Utah it is past six PM. We are tired and do not want to go out to shop. I look in the freezer and find a container of meat sauce from June. I defrost it and, voila, dinner!
Spaghetti with meat sauce
Here is my abbreviated menu for this week. We are trying to use up proteins from the freezer.
Grillin’ Wednesday – Grilled steak, grilled potato, spinach
Meatless Thursday – Afghani dahl, fattoush
Fishy Friday – Shrimp scampi, pasta
Exotic Saturday – Banh mi burgers, salad
Classic Sunday – Chicken breast, broccoli, butternut squash
Posted in Beef, Easy, Italian, leftovers, Pasta, Vegetables, Weekly menu
Leave a comment
Noodles and eggplant. 9/24/18
I had a procedure done on my knee over the weekend so there has not been any cooking. John went out and bought some Chinese food and we have been eating it.
I chose this dish because I thought it would be vegetarian but instead it was eggplant and ground pork. The noodles are hand-cut. I did not eat this entire giant bowl of noodles, eggplant, and pork. John has a healthy portion of leftovers left to eat.
Hand-cut noodles with eggplant (and pirk)
Vegetarian lasagna. 9/22/18
Last night we ate our friends’ and they made a delicious vegetarian lasagna. The recipe was Ina Garten’s Roasted Vegetable Lasagna. I cannot recommend it enough. The use of goat cheese is inspired.
Vegetable lasagna
Swimming up stream: Salmon. 9/21/18
For some reason we have less success cooking fish than anything other protein. Shellfish, we are usually cool with but fish, especially salmon, we have a hard time getting to look like the photos from cooking sites. Tonight’s salmon is slightly over cooked and oozing out so much of that white stuff that we mostly hide it under the parsley/caper/scallion sauce.
Salmon hiding under parsley sauce with yellow rice and broccoli
Part of our problem is timing. John is cooking the fish while I am cooking the rice and broccoli plus making the sauce. I get the brilliant idea (to me) of putting the broccoli on top of the rice for the last ten minutes to steam it so we will not have to dirty another pot. So I manage to throw off the cooking time of the rice which leaves the salmon oozing in its pan too long. The dinner is mostly saved by the tasty parsley sauce.
Daughter walks in as we are finishing dinner and I say, have the rest of the rice if you want it. She takes the rice, adds the uncrispy fish skin, tops this concoction with an over-easy egg, and goes off yumming happily. So there is a silver lining to our fish story tonight.
Posted in American, Fish, pescatarian, rice, Vegetables
Tagged broccoli, Pescatarian, salmon, yellow rice
Leave a comment
Omnivore 