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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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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