Leftover leftovers plus a delicious vegetable dish. 9/13/17

Posted on September 14, 2017 by Beebamom

I was supposed to make a chickpea stew for dinner tonight but I didn’t. I just was not feeling it and I knew we still had a lot of one pot chicken and rice curry in the refrigerator. But I did not just want to eat a giant bowl of it so I had to come up with a vegetable that would end up being as little of this and a little of that.

Leftovers plus a combination of Umfelliferae and Cruciferae family vegetables

I thought about which vegetables would work well together and decided to combine two families of vegetables. From the Umgelliferae or parsley family I have carrots, celery, an parsley. From the Cruciferae family I chose broccoli, brussel sprouts, and cabbage. I sauteed these in some oil and they made a delicious “seasonal vegetable.”

I still have some one pot curried chicken left but I promise it will not make an appearance tomorrow night. Tomorrow is John’s birthday and I need to come up with something special.

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One pot curried chicken and rice. 9/12/17

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Beebamom

John and I have been debating what to call this dish. It is not a traditional curry which you serve over rice. This is more, hey, we have some leftover chicken! What shall we do with it that is fairly easy and has minimal clean-up?

One pot curried chicken and rice

While John assembles the curry spices and slices up the chicken, I cut up the onions, garlic, and carrots. He sweats the spices, onions, and garlic in oil and butter and then coats the rice. He then adds the chicken, some raisins and the carrots plus cooking liquid (water or chicken broth) and seasons the dish. He brings it to a boil and then simmers until the rice is done. I garnish it with sliced green onions.

Quick, easy, tasty, and minimal mess! That’s my kind of dish for dinner!

 

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How to keep your stovetop clean and shiny. 9/11/17

Posted on September 12, 2017 by Beebamom

On Monday we flew to Las Vegas, rented a car, and drove to St. George, Utah. We stopped at the grocery store on the way to the house and picked up a rotisserie chicken and a bag of salad.

In lieu of having something interesting to post I will share a bit of kitchen magic – how I keep my stovetop clean and shiny.

Here’s my stainless steel cooktop. It is 6 1/2 years old. Looks pretty good, right?

My stainless steel cooktop

I can tell you that it is a real bugger to clean. After fighting with it for a few years I got one of these.

John cooking on an induction burner

Yes, my solution to a messy stove is to use it as little as possible and never for something that spatters. The countertop is a lot easier to clean up than the stovetop. This induction burner cost about $50 and has saved me (actually mostly John) a lot of clean-up time. Plus it doesn’t heat up the kitchen. The only thing to remember is that it does not work with aluminum pots and pans. You have to use cast iron or stainless steel bottomed cookware.

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Sous vide then grill. 9/9/17

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Beebamom

A couple of Christmases ago I bought John an immersion circulator as a present. Last year I got him a vacuum sealer. Although chicken is our main ingredient for the sous vide method, it works really well on steak too.

The piece of meat he made was a prime ribeye cap steak. We got it at Costco. It is a narrow strip from the top of a ribeye steak. It is spiraled up and tied with string. He cooked it in the immersion circulator set to 125F.  We let it stay in its bath for about 2 hours until we were ready for dinner. At that point John turned on the grill and seared each side for 2 minutes. It came out perfectly! I steamed some delicious tiny new potatoes and we had the rest of our spinach soufflé from the other night.

Ribeye cap with new potatoes and spinach souffle

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Simple salad and pasta 9/8/17

Posted on September 9, 2017 by Beebamom

As you know pasta is one of my favorite things to eat. This is usually exemplified by my forgetting to take a picture in my enthusiasm to get down to eating. This time was no exception. But I do have a picture of salad!

Mixed greens and cherry tomato salad with garlic crouton

I used mostly my lo-cal salad dressing that I make from a Good Seasons packet adding only a teaspoon of oil with the contents of the packet along with water and vinegar. I bought some xantham gum a while ago and use a pinch to thicken things up. I do not understand why Good Seasons stopped making their fat free blend. I can only assume it was because I liked it.

I went through my old spaghetti pictures to find one that looks sort of like our meal. You can see our daughter’s bounty of tomatoes from the community garden in the background. That was in July.  We have way more now.

NOTE: For a vegan dish omit parmesan cheese and use a vegan salad dressing

Spaghetti with fresh tomato/basil sauce

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Sort of chicken parm on the fly 9/7/17

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Beebamom

Sometimes as the dinner hour approaches I decide I just cannot stand the idea of what we are supposed to be eating for dinner. In this case it was chicken breast with new potatoes and green beans. So I changed it up to something a little tastier, chicken Parmesan with spinach and garlic bread.

Chicken Parmesan with spinach and garlic bread

John sous vide one chicken breast that we split. Then he melted a slice of ultra thin Swiss cheese on top and added some spaghetti sauce from a jar. The spinach is Stouffer’s spinach soufflé and I toasted the bread and rubbed some garlic on it and a little olive oil.

Yay! This was so much better than our original plan. Sometimes you just have to be flexible!

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Use it or lose it – a bowl of vegetables 9/6/17

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Beebamom

Bowl of vegetables

We have so many cherry tomatoes! It seems that our daughter’s cherry tomato plants are much more prolific than her sandwich size tomatoes. On top of this I have a lot of vegetables I bought about a week ago in the refrigerator. What to do?!

Originally I thought I would make a pasta sauce so I sautéed up everything (corn, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, Brussels sprouts, and bell pepper) but the kitchen was hot and I was tired so I settled for a bowl of vegetables. The outcome was less than I had hoped for. I think adding the mushrooms was a mistake or maybe it just would have been better as a pasta sauce. But at least I did not waste a whole bunch of vegetables!

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Tired of burgers and leftovers – 9/5/17

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Beebamom

Hopefully this is the end of burgers and leftovers. I have had enough. Problem is whenever I am having a family get-together I make way too much food and I do not like to throw things out. On Wednesday, even though there are still ribs in the refrigerator, John can eat them or we can freeze them.  I need to move on to something else.

However Tuesday’s dinner consisted of grill hamburgers, olive oil based potato salad and Texas caviar, a bean and veg salad.

Hamburger, potato salad and Texas caviar

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Labor Day Weekend Menu 2017

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Beebamom

Here’s a vegetarian menu from our Labor Day weekend. Since we were in the midst of watching the U.S. Open we fixed a course then ate it while watching the matches and then during a commercial or lull we made the next course. First up, a broccoli salad-

Broccoli salad

This salad has a dressing of oil and vinegar plus some grated onion, sugar,and quite a bit of celery seed. So it is sweet and tart with a fairly strong celery flavor. I let it marinate for an hour or two. Next we had corn-

Corn on the cob

For this I shuck the corn and give it two minutes on high in the microwave per ear. Fresh summer corn is the best! Finally we finished with vegetarian burgers-

California style veggie burger

This is a Morningstar griller burger. I wish it were more substantive. I used to buy chipotle bean burgers at the local Costco but they are no longer available. Why is it California-style? When I was growing up on the East Coast , it meant the hamburger was served in a a bun with mayo, lettuce, tomato, and raw onion. I guess the fact that it included vegetables made it “Californian!”

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Cool vegan dinner on a hot night – 8/31/17

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Beebamom

We are experiencing “hot-pocolypse” here in California. With temperatures forecast in the 100s (F) it’s time for a no-cook dinner.

Hummus with tabbouleh, roasted beets, and pita

I bought the hummus but made the tabbouleh following (sort of) a New York Times Cooking recipe, Lebanese Tabbouleh. The salad has the emphasis on the parsley rather than the bulgur. It calls for three bunches of parsley and only 1/4 cup bulgur wheat. I wanted to make a little more so that we could have it for dinner again so added 1/2 cup instead. It got rave reviews. A few garnishes such as cherry tomatoes, pepperoncini, and olives round out the dish.

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