Swimming up stream. 4/30/18

Posted on May 1, 2018 by Beebamom

I posted our menu for the week. As you can see there are a lot of old favorites plus some Spring produce added to the same-old, same-old dishes. I am feeling like we are in a rut as far as our dinner choices are concerned. During this week John and I are going to be looking into some new dishes so we can debut one or two the following week. I proposed that we find a new chicken, fish/shellfish, and vegetarian dish. Hopefully they will be ones that we can put into the rotation.

This week’s menu

Last night’s dinner was somewhat of a departure from our usual fare. We were going to have classic chicken dinner but when we were at the grocery store we saw this steelhead (which I later learned was not salmon but trout) and since it was fresh fish we wanted to eat it right away. So chicken will have to wait for Tuesday.

With the fish I made cauliflower mash which was okay but don’t fool yourselves, it does not taste like mashed potatoes, and some local asparagus. The asparagus was $2.47 a pound which is definitely in the buyable range. John made a sauce with capers and lemon with butter which I thought was a little tart but he liked it. I think I am much more picky than he is. All in all it was a good dinner.

Steelhead trout with mashed cauliflower and chives plus asparagus

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Vegetarian/Vegan on the road. 4/29/18

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Beebamom

Finding good choices for lunch when you are traveling is always hard. On Sunday during our long trip home we stopped at Mojave Thai Cuisine. It is an unlikely restaurant in a desert town. We had our favorite Thai dish, spicy Thai basil with eggplant and tofu. Since I do not know all the ingredients, I cannot say for sure whether it is vegan or not but it is vegetarian and delicious! We stopped here once before on our travels and we asked for it spicy and it nearly blew our heads off. This time we asked for medium spicy and it was toned down just enough.

Look into ethnic restaurants on your road trips. Often their food is fresher and healthier than fast food burgers. Plus you will probably have some leftovers to take home with you for dinner!

Spicy Thai basil eggplant and tofu from Mojave Thai Cuisine

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Mediterranean fish soup. 4/27/18

Posted on April 28, 2018 by Beebamom

We are leaving Utah on Sunday so it is time for some eat down. We have not made this dinner for a while but when I saw half of a fennel bulb and part of a bell pepper in the fridge, Mediterrean fish soup was calling to me. We decided that frozen salmon and shrimp would be our seafood.

There is not really much to making this. You just chop a bunch of aromatics. Sauté them and then add some fish stock. We used a bottle of clam juice, some stock we made from the shrimp shells, white wine, and canned diced tomatoes with their juice. You also add the potatoes at this point and a bay leaf and some thyme and orange zest. Once the potatoes are ready you add the seafood and a half cup of Pernod. It only takes a couple of minutes for the fish to cook and the soup is done!

Mediterrean fish soup

If you are looking for an actual recipe, my soup is adapted from Rick Stein’s Mediterrean Fish Soup which you can find on the internet. His is more involved and uses a lot of fish to make the stock. I am sure his is more delicious and prettier than mine. However, I like to make mine quick and easy as well as tasty.

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Modern grilling-potatoes. 4/26/18

Posted on April 27, 2018 by Beebamom

With our steak that I talked about in my last post, we had grilled baked potatoes. This is super easy. Buy a good sized baking potato since you will be eating half and your partner or whomever will eat the other half. Cut the raw potato in half longitudinally. Score the cut side of each half. Rub a little olive oil on the face of each potato. Add salt, pepper, garlic or whatever else you would prefer. Herbs are not a great choice since they burn. Microwave until just about cooked. When whatever else you are grilling is almost done, put on the potatoes cut side down. Check frequently so they do not get burnt but a nice char is great.

Grilled baked potato

This works great with sweet potatoes too!

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Modern grilling-steak. 4/25/18

Posted on April 26, 2018 by Beebamom

To grill a perfect steak, you need a little equipment. Here is how we do it. First season the steak. Next vacuum seal it. Fill a tub with water and add an immersion circulator. Set the temperature to 125F (for medium rare). Put the steak in its bag into the water making sure it is totally submerged. We clip ours to one of the sides. Once the water comes up to temperature, let it stay in the bath for at least 1 1/2 hours but it can go longer if you need some extra time. When the time is almost up heat up your grill for 10 minutes (gas grill.)  Take the steak out of the bag and put in on the grill for two to two and a half minutes on each side. Result-perfectly cooked medium rare steak with nice grill marks on both sides.

Rib eye cap steak with grilled potato and spinach

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Unbeatable scallops! 4/24/18

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Beebamom

It appears we have thrown out our carefully planned menu and now are eating willy-nilly. This morning I gave John a number of dinner choices and he said that he would really like to have the fried scallops dinner again. To that I said, yay! Voila!

Scallops, new potatoes, and collards and corn

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Leftover-ish? 4/23/18

Posted on April 25, 2018 by Beebamom

I took about 4 oz. of ground beef out of the freezer just in case our neighbors decided not to fulfill their “c’mon over” invitation from last Sunday. We had not heard from them all week so I did not know what to expect. Of course, I had made snickerdoodles just in case.

As it turns out we were invited and had a nice time. So on Monday I awaken to defrosted ground beef in the fridge. I combined this with about 6 oz. of mushrooms and, using pre existing ingredients, made a pasta with beef/mushroom sauce for dinner.

Spaghetti with mushroom and ground beef tomato sauce

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Unhungry dinner. 4/21/18

Posted on April 23, 2018 by Beebamom

Today we just were not hungry for dinner. That includes the dinner we planned on our menu which was steak and the back-up dinner, spaghetti with mushroom and garlic sauce. So we ended up using our leftover brown rice and made rice with mushrooms and garlic. Meh. Probably the best thing to do when you are not hungry is not eat.

Brown rice with mushrooms and garlic

On Sunday we ate at our neighbors’ house. We had slow cooked chicken and ribs, a salad, heated up frozen mixed vegetables, and the snickerdoodle cookies I made.

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Cookies sense my fear and loathing. 4/21/18

Posted on April 21, 2018 by Beebamom

I do not like sweet things and I really despise how sugar and flour get all over the kitchen when you bake things. I made snickerdoodle cookies today because we may be invited to some neighbor’s house tomorrow and I have to bring something. This being Utah I cannot simply bring a bottle of wine.

I think these sweet things that I try to make sense my fear and loathing of them. To spite me they never come out the way they are supposed to. In fact I have made cookies for my children when they were kids and they actually would not eat them.

I present my snickerdoodle cookies. They spread out too much so some ended up touching each other. They are too thin. After I adjusted for them coming out so large, they stopped doing it so I have different sized cookies. Some got a little dark even though I was cooking them the same amount of time. My daughter makes these cookies and they come out perfectly. My cookies definitely do not like me.

Variable snickerdoodle cookies

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Shrimp in saffron Pernod sauce. 4/20/18

Posted on April 21, 2018 by Beebamom

Wow, that makes two fancy dinners this week! This recipe comes from The Kenwood Restaurant up in Sonoma wine country via my friend, George. Sadly the Kenwood has gone out of business but John has just related to me that the site is back in business under new ownership as Salt and Stone. Looking forward to giving it a try.

Shrimp in saffron Pernod sauce

We served this with some brown rice (using the oven method) and collard greens with corn. This dinner takes a lot of fancy chopping up. All the vegetables for the shrimp dish need to be brunoise-ed and the collard greens have to be chiffonaded.

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