Hamburgers and tabbouleh. 4/19/18

Posted on April 20, 2018 by Beebamom

Some American food with a Mediterrean side made for a tasty dinner. John seasoned the burgers with salt and pepper and also added a little baking soda to help the meat stay juicy. Although they were a little more medium than medium rare when they came off the grill, the baking soda had done its job and they were juicy and delicious. I always eat any type of sandwich open faced and burgers are no exception. Also using a knife and fork slows you down.

Open-face hamburger with onion and lettuce, side of tabbouleh

I used a Lebanese tabbouleh recipe that I got from the NYT Cooking site. I like it a lot. Unfortunately it wasn’t until I was part way into it that I realized I did not have mint or enough lemon. We ate it but it was not as good as it usually is. I have half of it left so tomorrow I am going to run out to the store and pick up the missing ingredients.

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Fancy dinner night. 4/18/18

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Beebamom

What’s the occasion? No occasion! Sometimes it is just nice to treat yourself to an out of the ordinary dinner. Tonight’s dinner was fried scallops and tartar sauce with steamed new potatoes and broccoli salad. It was really good!

Fried scallops with new potatoes and broccoli salad

In lunchtime news I used our new Instant Pot to make celery soup. A head of celery, an onion, a potato, an herb, and some stock or water along with a little olive oil are the ingredients. After sauté-ing the onions, I added the rest of the ingredients and pressure cooked it for 10 minutes. I used a stick blender to purée the soup and then I adjusted the seasonings. Voila, a tasty lo-cal soup!

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Classic Chicken Monday on Tuesday. 4/17/18

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Beebamom

Since I slipped the schedule, Classic Chicken Monday dinner ended up on Tuesday. In preparation for cooking the dinner we went out and bought an Instant Pot for Utah so we could more easily make rutabagas. (We do enjoy our kitchen toys!) Everything turned out tasty although I am asking John to set the immersion circulator a few degrees higher for the chicken breasts next time. They came out a little spongy this time.

Chicken breast with broccoli and rutabagas

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And then we got a pizza. 4/16/18

Posted on April 18, 2018 by Beebamom

Pizza

Yes, after all my boasting yesterday that creating a menu saves me from ordering pizza we went ahead and ordered pizza. Not this exact one-this is a pizza we had in Rome. I was too embarrassed to actually take a picture of our actual Utah pizza. Anyway I forgive ourselves an now with an amended menu, we are back on track.

Amended menu

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Healthy start to the week. 4/15/18

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Beebamom

Now that we are here in Utah and we have taken care of the unpacking and the installation of our patriotic goose guard, it’s time to make a menu and shopping list.

Patriotic goose guard to keep the Canadian geese from pooping all over our patio

I like to make a menu for a couple of reasons. First of all it insures that I will buy what I need at the grocery store and secondly, it kind of makes sure that I actually make dinner and do not give in to “let’s call for pizza.” Also, if I know what we are eating tonight in the morning, I can get a jump on the prep early.

Weekly menu

I have to admit that this is a pretty tasty looking menu with lots of variety. Since many of these entrees could be on the high calorie side, I need to watch the portion sizes carefully.

On Sunday night we had chickpea stew with ditalini or salad macaroni and Lacinto kale. Usually I just go with a package of spinach but I am trying to be careful with the produce since there has been an e.coli outbreak recently. This is an easy omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan dish. It just depends on what type of stock you use and if you put parmesan cheese on top.

Chickpea stew with ditalini and Lacinato kale

There is nothing tricky about this stew-just chop up the vegetables, sauté them, add the stock, and put the greens in at the end. Once the chopping is done, it takes about 20 minutes. Colorful and delicious!

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Bad lunch on the road. 4/14/18

Posted on April 15, 2018 by Beebamom

When John and I travel back and forth between NorCal and Utah we like to stop at family owned places for lunch. There are certainly lots of chain restaurants and fast food available but you get lots of interesting lunches at these small places.

We chose a Mexican place in a town in the Mojave Desert for lunch. It is a small restaurant in a strip mall that has gotten very good reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp!. Unfortunately for us and them they were having a bad day.

Here is a picture of the food-

Carnitas with rice and beans and a small salad

First we got a very small bowl of chips that was about half full. This was accompanied by a salsa which was either straight out of a hot sauce bottle or puréed to liquid. It was so unappealing that at the end of lunch our tiny half bowl of chips was only half emptied. Then our lunch came. The carnitas was so overcooked that it was dried out into shards of pork. The accompanying salad had no dressing. The gloppy looking refried beans and the rice were okay but were served at a temperature that was barely room temperature. There were also some corn tortillas which were good.

What did the hundreds of people who reviewed this restaurant eat?! If they ordered what I had than I can no longer trust my fellow diners. The best I can hope for is that this place was having a very bad day. Either way we won’t be back.

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Yes, we ate steak again. 3/12/18

Posted on April 13, 2018 by Beebamom

Usually I post a menu for the week so I make sure we are not eating the same things too closely together. This week there is no menu and I actually did not realize that we just had steak until I looked at the blog this morning.

Steak was done the usually way in the immersion circulator and then on the grill. We had the rest of the cauliflower/parsley purée and some sauteed broccoli with pepper flakes as sides.

Steak, broccoli, and cauliflower/parsley puree

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Chicken Cacciatore. 4/11/18

Posted on April 12, 2018 by Beebamom

We made this tasty dinner using boneless chicken thighs, fennel, red bell pepper, onion, garlic, olives, red wine, and chicken stock.

Chicken Cacciatore

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Turf then surf. 4/8 and 4/9/18

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Beebamom

On Sunday we turfed with a ribeye cap steak which we first cooked in the immersion circulator to a delicious 125F degrees. Then John put it on the grill along with a microwaved baked potato cut in half to get some good grill marks on them. Our green veg was the old standby, broccoli, which seems always to be in season.

Ribeye cap steak with grilled potato and broccoli

And on Monday we surfed making Pacific cod with a chimichurri sauce, on top of puréed cauliflower and parsley, and sauteed zucchini with onions and garlic as a side. I steamed the cauliflower for about 12 minutes and then popped it in the food processor with the parsley, some butter, and a little water and salt and pepper.

Pacific cod with chimichurri sauce on top of puréed cauliflower and parsley and a side of zucchini with garlic and onions

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Spaghetti rigate X 2. 4/6 and 4/7/18

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Beebamom

We bought some Barilla spaghetti rigate the other day and thought we would return to Italy for the evening meal. Rigate means striated and the spaghetti has grooves on it that run the length of each strand. It helps the sauce to adhere to it.

Our sauce was part of a container of meat sauce to which we added additional tomato sauce and one finally diced leftover sausage from the other night.

Spaghetti rigate with beer/sausage sauce

Saturday night was a leftover night. I had the leftover pasta and a salad and John had leftover chicken and salad.

Leftover spaghetti rigate

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