Shrimp Scampi. 7/19/18

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Beebamom

Tonight John is making a recipe from America’s Test Kitchen, shrimp scampi. In our house we have a division of labor when it comes to cooking. John is in charge of all red meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish. I am in charge of all things vegetable. Of course this does not mean the we do not help each other out with components of each other’s dishes. John is an expert garlic peeler and chopper-upper and I have been known to brown meat. My assignment for tonight is toasting bread and preparing green beans.

Shrimp scampi with Frenched green beans

John makes a stock out of the shrimp shells to use in the sauce. He simmers the shrimp briefly and sets them aside while he makes the garlic sauce. I chop up the parsley. The green beans are a sticking point between us. John does not mind big honking green beans but I find them unpalatable. My mom always Frenched our green beans which is to cut them longitudinally and take the string off the string bean. I have a gadget that does just that. So I made big green beans for John and I have the thin ones in the picture for myself.

Dinner is yummy and the bread is especially good at soaking up the sauce.

 

Posted in Shellfish, Vegetables | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Another try at 3 Cup Chicken. 7/18/18

Posted on July 19, 2018 by Beebamom

This is the third attempt at 3 Cup Chicken and we are still not getting it to taste the way we are hoping for. So I think we going to put this recipe in the back of the binder or maybe in the recycle bin. It just ends up tasting like an American attempt at Chinese food – all soy sauce and sesame oil. I need to find a better recipe.

3 cup chicken with rice and broccoli

Posted in Poultry, rice, Vegetables | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Portuguese tapas. 7/17/18

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Beebamom

Today is our actual anniversary day. Forty-six years ago John and I hopped in my ‘67 Pontiac Tempest and eloped. Pretty exciting!  Back in the day you did not marry out of your religion very much and John and I were doing that big time! So we decided if we can’t please everyone, we might as well please ourselves. Forty-six years later I guess we proved all the nay-sayers wrong!

Anyway, we drove up to Wine Country and had our anniversary lunch at a Portuguese tapas place. We love to try all sorts of different things and eating at this restaurant gave us the opportunity to sample a bunch of stuff.

Ceviche, goat stew, crispy potatoes, and pork sliders

We also tried some octopus salad, tripe, and shishito peppers. It was great fun. For dessert we ordered two small Dixie cup sized ice creams-salted olive oil  and piri piri chocolate.

Olive oil and chocolate piri piri ice creams

 

Posted in Dining out | Tagged | Leave a comment

Hot times! Soup and sandwich. 7/16/18

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Beebamom

Just too hot to cook? A light, no cook dinner is just what you need. For our hot night  dinner we made a slightly different version of gazpacho than last week. Since we had no fresh tomatoes or salsa I used canned. I also added onion, cucumber, garlic, bell pepper, sherry vinegar, and olive oil to the blender and whizzed it up. The lack of fresh tomatoes was noticeable. I will not make it like this again.

Gazpacho

Our accompanying sandwich was an open faced tuna salad. Due to my many years (lifetime!) of dieting I never eat a sandwich with two pieces of bread. I use lettuce as my lid. Toasting the bottom piece of bread makes it stiff enough to be held with your thumb on the bottom and the rest of your fingers on top of the lettuce. In my tuna salad I have mayo, yellow mustard, parsley, relish,capers, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Open-faced tuna salad sandwich

Posted in Fish, Healthy tips, Kitchen tips, pescatarian | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Make it yourself! 7/15/18

Posted on July 16, 2018 by Beebamom

Sometimes doing the easiest thing may be expedient but it is often not the best. Last night for Wildcard Sunday we bought some prepared ribs at the grocery store and a bag of shredded cabbage with a dressing to make cole slaw.

John heated up the baby back ribs in the microwave and we were treat to mostly bones with very little meat for a pretty steep price. The cole slaw dressing was so sweet that we had to do significant fixing to make it edible. In addition I also made another Greek cucumber salad which I think John is getting sick of.

Grocery store ribs, pre-packaged cole slaw, and Greek cucumber salad with feta

My suggestion is “Do it yourself!” and if it seems like too much work or trouble then choose something else instead! A simple egg dish, a thrown together soup, or a tuna salad sandwich is much more satisfying than an expensive disappointment.

This morning we sat down and created our menu for the week. It includes two chicken meals, two seafood meals, two vegetarian meals, and one celebration lunch since Tuesday is our actual anniversary. A trip to the grocery store is imminent. No shortcuts this week!!

Posted in American, Kitchen tips, Pork, take-out, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Celebration dinner. 7/14/18

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Beebamom

It is not quite our anniversary but we decided to have an early celebration.  No doubt we will be celebrating again on Tuesday. Forty-six years of marriage deserves a lot of celebrating!

We are dining at Navio, the fine dining restaurant at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, CA. We opt for the chef’s tasting menu. It seems like a lot to eat but the portions are very small. Here are some pictures and descriptions from the dinner.

Amuse bouche-avocade cream, uni, and caviar in a buckwheat shell

Ahi tuna ribbons with mustard fruit, black sesame, and basil

King salmon with pumpernickel, sorrel, and smoked onion

Rabbit with foie gras, morrel mushrooms, and favs bean

Cappuccino coffe mousse with vanilla creme

These were all really good. In addition we had an amuse bouche of hamachi and a pasta dish which was less successful. (I forgot to take a picture!)

It was such a nice evening. The serving personnel were pleasant and we met a nice couple at a nearby table who were celebrating their 12th anniversary.

Happy Anniversary to us!!

 

Posted in Dining out | Tagged | Leave a comment

Chicken fried rice. 7/13/18

Posted on July 14, 2018 by Beebamom

This was basically a chicken stir-fry with lots of vegetables and an egg. The brown and white rices were pre-cooked and mixed in. John made it so the bottom rice was crispy and I am not sure that I like that. It makes the rice hard. The dinner was fine and it used up a bunch of vegetables that had been lingering in the refrigerator. It was just that after all the exciting meals this week chicken fried rice seemed a little blah.240BC84F-1D17-48DD-BBC2-93A78DC9DB0B

Posted in Poultry, rice, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Afghani Dahl, fattoush, brown rice. 7/12/18

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Beebamom

We forgot to defrost the chicken for chicken fried rice so we decided to push that dinner to Friday and make another fine pantry/fridge vegan/vegetarian meal on Thursday.

Note: For a vegan dish omit or substitute the yogurt on the lentils.

Afghani lentils, fattoush, and brown rice

We had this lentil dish a few weeks ago and it was really delicious. Having made it once we knew how to tweak it more to our taste. We used a little less ginger in it.  I made the brown rice first thing in the morning in the oven so it would not heat up the kitchen later in the day. Fattoush is like a Lebanese panzanella salad. It has lettuce, parsley, mint, tomatoes, cucumbers,  green onions, and crisped up pita broken into pieces and then sauteed in a bit of olive oil and dusted with salt, pepper, and sumac. Sumac is a citric-tasting spice. The dressing is olive oil, lime juice, sumac, salt, and a pinch of allspice and cinnamon

So far this week we have had Greek, French, Italian, Afghani, and Lebanese cuisines! Cooking and eating various ethnic dishes is like traveling around the world from your own table!

Posted in Kitchen tips, Mediterranean, rice, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Whole grain spaghetti with herbs and ground beef sauce. 7/11/18

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Beebamom

Tuna is on our menu for today but since John is our meat, poultry, and fin man and he is at work today, we are being flexible and swapping out the tuna. John has asked for pasta with meat sauce and who am I to turn him down. (Plus I love this dinner!)

We have a tiny backyard, really just a patio with some beds around the edges. In my picture you can see that it is mostly paved and the edge of John’s decrepit old grill.

Our patio with parsley and oregano on the lower left and sage on the upper right

I try to get as much space for growing herbs as I can. The biggest problem is that it is almost entirely shade. I even keep some herbs in pots so I can move them around during the day to where there might be a patch of sunlight. Having fresh herbs to put in our dishes really makes a difference.

A line-up of thyme, chives, mint in a pot, oregano, basil in a pot, more oregano and Italian parsley

Even if you only have a windowsill, growing herbs is very fulfilling and gives you a nice fresh taste in your cooking. I used oregano and basil in my spaghetti sauce.

Whole grain spaghetti with a ground beef and herb tomato sauce

 

 

Posted in Beef, Italian, Kitchen tips, Pasta, Vegetables | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sous vide chicken breast with corn, shallots, and cream. 7/10/18

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Beebamom

John and I love French food although we rarely make it.  In our minds the fabulous ingredients and sauces are just too rich for a weekday night. However since I have been trying to introduce new dishes to my website and a little more variety to our cooking and dining, I have been scouring the internet for new dishes. On Chicken Tuesday instead of the same old classic chicken I found a recipe for chicken with a creamy mustard sauce by Pierre Franey. I spent many wee hours of the night watching his shows on Public Television in the 1980’s while feeding my babies.

Sous vide chicken breast with corn, shallots, and cream

Pierre Franey did not sous vide his chicken breasts but we are trying to keep the heat down in the kitchen and we know that using the immersion circulator will give us perfectly cooked chicken. John makes the sauce of shallots, corn, and cream while I get the broccoli ready and heat up the leftover rice from our Chinese take-out dinner on Sunday.

The juice from the chicken in the sous vide bag is added to the sauce and the broccoli is cooked and the rice reheated. We put it together on our plate for a fabulous weekday meal  that could easily be made in under an hour using a saute of the chicken breast instead.

I need to be looking for some additional French dishes!

 

 

Posted in French, leftovers, Poultry, rice, Vegetables | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment