Sauteed Spaghetti Squash and Misc Veg

Whoa, it's been a few days.  It's not like I haven't been cooking, I just haven't posted anything. Let's ease ourselves back with a "How f-ing lazy is she - this isn't a recipe" meal.

Chard and Bacon Pizza

Remember when I made the pizza the other day and said you get two pizzas from a batch of dough? Here's round two.

Two Day Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from a Magazine

So I've been making this bread, from a recipe. It takes days.

I've made bread before.   I make sandwich bread on the weekend, every other weekend, and freeze it, and we cut off slices and defrost throughout the week.  I thought I was all set with this oatmeal sandwich bread that turns out all pretty.

this is a pre-blog photo, when everything was yellow

But it's heavy, and oatmealy, and after a while I got tired of it.

Then this issue of Cook's Illustrated came in.  I love Cook's Illustrated, I've had a subscription for years (thanks Kristen!) and I read it the second it comes in, every time.  Cover to cover in one shot.  I usually pour myself a glass of wine and settle in in my jammies on the couch and just read.  But I've never cooked from it.  I'm just not a recipe girl.  I don't know what my excuse is.   And then this issue was like a sign - I need a whole wheat sandwich bread, and Cook's Illustrated is promising one.

Chicken Fajitas

 I've been making this for years and years, and still whenever I eat it, I'm like, "Why don't I do this more often?"  It's quick, it doesn't take a lot of ingredients, and it's cheap* and healthy.  And you could totally make it vegetarian with either fake meat or no meat.  And you could totally add more vegetables (zucchini and eggplant would be rad).  

The requirements, as far as I'm concerned, are onions, peppers, and tortillas.  The rest is flexible.

CSA Decision 2011

We went for it.  We switched CSA farms.  I'm feeling a little guilty already.

Butter fail

I use the defrost setting on my microwave to soften butter.  You only need a few seconds.  Just don't accidentally set it for a few minutes and walk away. 

That's my kitchen tip of the day. 

Whole Wheat Banana Bread

Banana bread.  I'm posting this for Michelle, since she's getting tired of all the meat.

I think there are two basic styles of banana bread: breakfasty and desserty. This is breakfasty. It's sweet, but not supersweet, and it's hearty and a little heavy. It's a meal.

Steak and Creamed Spinach, Mushrooms and Onions

Steak.  And Creamed Spinach.  And Caramelized Onions.  And Mushrooms in wine sauce.  Yeah, it got a little crazy here on Sunday. 

Meat"ball" Pizza

Pizza.  Where it all began.

I mean that in a few ways. 

When I was much less experienced at cooking, and we were much more likely to eat something out of a box, I started buying balls of pizza dough at my grocery store.  I think making my own pizza - even though I wasn't making the dough - was the start of our increased appreciation for making our food at home.  With that came choosing interesting ingredients, being more fully in control of what we were consuming, and increased confidence in my ability to cook things myself and enjoy them more than if I had paid someone else to cook them.

I started making pizza dough a couple of years ago, and I remember how scared I was to use yeast for the first time.  I used to be a terrible baker - my inability to cook anything that included flour was a running joke.  I'm not really into most baked goods, so I still don't do a lot of baking, but when I do bake, it typically works out, and I've been able to tackle a few breads and slightly more advanced recipes, so pizza dough was really my intro into making doughs and such.

And finally, the blog.  A few weeks ago, I emailed a few friends my pizza dough recipe, and one of them suggested I start a blog, and I was like, yeah.  So, yeah.

So this is the same recipe I posted in the beginning, now with photos and a different topping.

Bison Bacon Cheeseburger

It's not so much a recipe as much as it was dinner.

Veggie Lasagna with Creamy Sauce

hi there.

sometimes you get all the way to layering your lasagna in the pan and realize you have no noodles.  luckily sous chef Brian can stop on his way home from school, but that means dinner is late.

Sweet and Sour Seitan - for realz

again with the yellow food, yellow bowl

Early in the blog, like, more than two weeks ago, I mentioned this dish, but it was just leftovers.

I'm fairly impressed with myself, since I haven't made the same dish twice (excluding leftovers) since I started this in late January, but today I broke that streak. When I made it the first time, I had never fried seitan and I followed a recipe exactly, which is so not me.

So this is take two, based very much on the recipe on Vegan Yum Yum, but you know, tweaked.

Valentines Day - Tinto

I didn't cook.  I didn't even think to photograph dinner until late.

Tinto was awesome.  I don't get interested in movie stars, or musicians, I don't follow celebrities, but I'm a little crazy for Jose Garces.

Nom!

Veggie sloppy joes

 

I really like sloppy joes.   They're sweet, spicy and tangy and they are (they have to be) on a soft roll so all of that flavor seeps into the bread. I haven't had the stuff in a can in a long time, but a few months back I figured out a sloppy joe sauce that I think tastes better than the stuff in the can, and Brian says that with bison it makes the best sloppy joe he's ever had.

Recently, at Good Dog, I had a vegan sloppy joe, where lentils were the "meat".  My mind was blown.   All this zesty goodness without the meat!  (I like meat, as in, I don't see myself going completely meat-free in the near future, but I really appreciate finding meals I love without it)

So this week I decided to try it at home.

Jalapeno Fail

I like spicy food.  I used feel like I was in a privileged class of people who could eat hotter food than most, but in recent years I've become aware of my limitations.  Maybe five years ago I burned my hand on a habanero and realized I needed to use gloves to cut some peppers. I guess that was the beginning of the end of me bragging about spicy food.

Then when we started eating banh mi, there were a few incidents.  There is one long slice of jalapeno on this sandwich, and maybe a tenth of the times I've eaten it, it's burned my face.  Burned my face, like caused me to mentally go through all those TV shows like Good Eats and Food Detectives (whoa, I can't find a clip of either, what's wrong with the internet?) that described scoville heat units and what to do to cool a burning mouth (milk, beer, sugar).  I finally settled on rubbing alcohol (not for inside the mouth, for outside the mouth) which I hear only works for some people.  So since then, I've typically taken the seeds out of the jalapeno, or torn the pepper into bits to distribute throughout the sandwich. 

So yesterday my shopping list included a single jalapeno, for a meal I was planning, but Trader Joes only had them in a box of ten (ten jalapenos for $1.59, compared to one jalapeno for $1.59 at Whole Foods) so I got the box.  Then I sat around thinking about what I could do with nine jalapenos.  I read a few canning articles, and scared myself again.  I thought about poppers but I don't really like them (but Brian does) and I don't have cream cheese, and how else do you get the cheese to stay in during breading?  And then remembered years ago some chain restaurant we went to had deep fried breaded jalapeno disks that we used to love.  So I went for it. Panko, egg, salt, jalapeno slices, and I was going to do it in the oven.

Oven Home Fries

I can't make breakfast first thing in the morning.  I want to eat within an hour of waking up, but I can't cook then.  So I do other things, but that means that when I'm hungry, breakfast isn't ready.  This is why I never make crepes anymore.  The idea of mixing up ingredients while I'm still groggy, letting the batter sit for an hour and then cooking them doesn't work for me.  So during the week, breakfast is oatmeal, and on weekends we typically have eggs. 

But you know what's great with eggs? Home fries.  But the bitch about home fries is the same thing as with crepes.  They're not ready now.

Ordering in! Sandwiches from Fuel

I didn't cook tonight.  My dining room ceiling fell down instead.  I'm being dramatic.  Part of my dining room ceiling fell down instead. 

Same Dinner Different Day: Chicken Avocado Tequila Salad

Tonight I faced a tired avocado and already wilted cilantro, leftover from Sunday's dinner.  So I made the same salad, but with chicken.  It's a chicken breast, coated in the same stuff I'd use for fajitas (cayenne, paprika, onion, garlic, salt, pepper) and grilled.

Same dinner, different day.  My avocado was softer, making it more a part of the dressing than the salad, which we both appreciated.

Seitan Tacos and Tequila Avocado Salad

mmmmm wheat meat.

Also, I finally get to use tequila as a food.

Cheese fondue

Brace yourself.  There's gonna be a lot of cheese.

I have a lot of Swiss cheese in my freezer.  When I say a lot, I mean like five pounds.  We're not big Swiss eaters and it came pretty often in the cheese portion of my CSA, so we've got plenty left over.  So it's time for fondue.

Baked Pasta with Pesto

Ok so tonight Brian was all, "pesto" and I was all, "We need to use up the ricotta I opened two days ago."  Because I'm practical.  Responsible even.   And I've had bad experiences with thinking the ricotta in the fridge was still ok, and finding out it wasn't, and ordering in.

"Oh, ok," I said.  "Like baked ziti, but with pesto?  Sound good?"  And he grunted a little, so I assumed I had permission to move forward with the plan*.

Chard and Cheesesteaks

Sometimes dinner is cheesesteaks.   Back in the day, we used to eat food that wasn't made of food, and so cheesesteaks were heavy in the rotation.  And I mean like, before we moved to the city, so not a Cheesesteak(tm) but Steak 'Ums or something.  We used to eat Kraft Mac n Cheese.


But now we eat food that's (almost) entirely made of stuff you'd recognize as food. We cheated a lil bit tonight with Wawa rolls, because when your husband is picking up bread on his way home from school after 9pm, that's what there is.  I'm certain they're not "made of food".


Also, red chard!  I forgot that I meant to use it in last night's dinner.  So steak sandwiches take like a minute to make, so we start with chard. Besides, it was getting a lil bit tired looking in the fridge.

wilted just means you have to cook it, and with chard, you have to cook it anyway.  raw chard is not lettuce.

Spinach and Bacon Stuffed Chicken

Chicken.


Chicken scares the hell out of me.  Everything that's been within a foot of raw chicken needs to be boiled immediately.  I was a vegetarian as a teenager and I blame that for why I'm afraid of meat, but chicken takes top prize*. 


So, ready for a "recipe"?  It's not scary once it's cooked. In fact it's delicious.