A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Jenn's Birthday Sushi and (Hooray) the REAL Japanese steakhouse "Orange" Seafood Sauce Recipe

 

Saturday night, we were invited over to our good friends', Corbin and Jenn's, house to help celebrate Jenn's (cough)nd birthday where we were told there would be a few people and some finger foods--a total underestimation of the food and fun! We met Janis, a fellow foodie who took on the task of a 3-course sushi meal for nine people and her daughter, Jordan, who along with Jenn's daughter, Chelsea, made dessert for us all of chocolate chip cookies and fudgy brownies.  Good work, ladies! Also invited were another lively couple, Al, and his wife Melissa (can't believe I didn't get a decent picture of them all night)  whom I think (from my investigation on Facebook) might know a bunch of people I know which is even more fun. Melissa also had the dubious job of keeping me ante'd into the poker hands last night since she was sitting next to me instead of Gene.  I think she didn't realize she was going to have to take on his job all night of taking care of me but I thank her!

Happy Birthday, Jenn!  Thanks for the great party!

Oktoberfest All Week: Jagerschnitzel

One of the things I find most intriguing about exploring culture cooking is that we all eat the same things, we just call them different things and prepare them in slightly different ways.  I'm talking about things like finding out as an adult that the exotic-sounding  polenta is really the cornmeal mush of my youth, or that tonight's Jagerschnitzel is pounded pork chops with delicious mushroom gravy.  I admit the jokester in me sometimes enjoys giving Gene that hour or two of wondering what in the heck we're going to be eating and then seeing the relief in his eyes when the odd sounding "Oktoberfest Jagerschnitzel" meal I made was just his beloved pork chops and mushroom gravy, although really rich gravy since it's made with sour cream instead of just corn starch thickening the pan drippings.

Look For This: FishEx Alaska Seafoods for fantastic Paula Deen Crab Cakes Recipe

Kayla, from Fish Ex, sent down a pound of King Crab legs and a 12 oz reindeer sausage from Alaska today. Let me tell you, that's a fun Fed Ex package to receive. Even the driver was excited. "Is this really seafood from Alaska?"  "Yep."  "Wow, you're so cool!"  Well, good heavens, now I have to order more just so I can feel all cool and full of myself to the Fed Ex drivers! 

Shipped on dry ice, it arrives like it came from next door...and when they read this, I bet the Rileys will wish it had been delivered next door by mistake.

You know, I could go on and on about how nice the crab was and how fun the reindeer sausage tasted but let me just put it this way: It's 7:30pm and I've already made those crab cakes, ate those crab cakes, tasted that reindeer sausage, and placed another order with Fish Ex to be shipped in this Thursday for dry scallops, shrimp, King Crab bisque, and another sausage for the family Halloween party. 

Do I really need to say much more?  Well, you know me.  I will anyway.  After you've checked out the rest of my pics, the Paula Deen recipe I used for the crab cakes, plus my own recipe for Jalapeno Lemon Aioli to top it with, go check out their website for more of the particulars:  www.fishex.com 

As for the order I just placed, the dry scallops are particularly appealing to me because I have thought, for years, that I was a scallop idiot.  I love jumbo scallops in restaurants but each time I've tried my hand at them at home they've always turned out soggy and rubbery.  I thought it was me.  Show of hands--anybody else had that problem? 

It's not us.  It's the scallops. Apparently the restaurant grade scallops are "dry" and the ones sold in the groceries are "wet" with sodium tripolyphosphate (STP) which binds to the protein fibers making the scallops slimey but preserves them so they last days longer in the seafood counter.  Feels like a terrible joke played on the consumer, doesn't it? 

The scallops available through Fish Ex are dry, meaning no chemicals added.  You can read more about it on their web site and there is also a great article in this month's Cooking Illustrated about the difference and how to overcome the STP by brining them in salty lemon water to mask, not remove, the STP.  I'll order the dry, thank you, and avoid the whole chemical quandary.

Now back to the crab....

Storing Roasted Garlic for a "Rainy Day"

 

I generally prefer the sweet mellowness of roasted garlic to raw garlic in a lot of my recipes but the problem is the extra time, or lack of, it takes to roast garlic prior to making any dish with it.  A couple of years ago I figured out this quick and easy solution: make a big batch and freeze it so it's available to me any time I want to cook with it.

Photo Diet Diary: The Chimichurri & Garlic Diet

 

Indulge me.  I've started a new diet. It's called the "Common Sense" Diet and it's of my own making.  Maybe I'll write my own book someday called "The Common Sense Diet:  Put Down the Bullshit Books and Use the Brain God Gave You by Glenna Anderson Muse."   (I like it.) 

I'm tired of reading books with complicated theories that promise that if only I will eat this and not that and take some special supplements and be a pain in the ass to every restaurant and friend's hospitality, THEN I'll be healthy, happy, and skinny. 

No, the uncomplicated truth is that if I eat good, real, fresh, unprocessed, unchemically saboutaged food then I'll be healhy(er).  Happy is up to me. No promises on skinny unless I put down the fork appropriately while getting off my ass at the same time, a complicated move here in Lazytown.  Sometimes I just need to remind myself that it's really NOT all that complicated. 

(Hmmm...I've said "ass" twice in two paragraphs. Perhaps I should have titled this the "ass" diet post.)

Here's a photo tour of my food intake from yesterday:  Gorgeous 4 oz filets with home-made  Chimichurri from parsley on the back porch. Equally beautiful 10/12 prawns sauteed in browned butter. Ceasar Salad.  Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes.  Wow.  The all garlic meal! But it was fabulous.

  

Lunch:  1/2 Price's Pimento Cheese Sandwich on Sara Lee White Wheat Bread & Musselman's No Sugar Added Applesauce

Snack:  Fiber One Oats & Caramel Bar (Really good. Too much sugar but a good alternative for other crap I could have eaten!)

Breakfast for Two:  Ham, Tomato, Potato, Green Pepper, & Onion Frittata.  This version with 4 eggs, 1/2 cup skim milk, a whole tomato, etc, and split by Gene and I, is 6 Weight Watchers points. 

By the way, I'm not much of a "meetings" person so I use weight watchers online to keep track of my food diary but I've only been to one meeting.  Ten years ago.  Never went back. I was too afraid from the gleams in the eyes and hands clasped to breasts that someone was going to speak in tongues and it just scared me a little.

That was my day with the exception of one 12 oz Coke, 2 glasses of water, and 4 glasses of iced herbal tea. 6 glasses of non-caffeinated beverages, five veggies, and having to pick fresh green stuff out of my teeth after dinner is a pretty good day in my book...

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Glenna's All Day Spaghetti 3-Meat Sauce (Low & Slow w/Lots of Veggies)

 

In keeping with the goals I've mentioned before of dieting and reining things back in my life, I've been thinking I'm going to start posting more of my daily menus, of course hoping it will inspire me more and more to keep fighting the good fight when it comes to food. As in REAL food, not processed crap.  Sure, there will be days when I eat out or drive through a "thru" or screw up (translation: soda!)  but all in all I'm feeling pretty rejuvinated. It's amazing to me how many of our choices in life, bad choices in life, are made because we feel bad.  Do you know what I mean? I'm finally, after months of respiratory infections and fighting my asthma, starting to feel like myself again.  The odd thing to me is how much feeling better has perked me back up in terms of not only my attitude but in my food choices and what I'm physically able to do.  I'm not "living" on sugar and caffeine anymore.  Isn't it the ultimate irony that when the body feels crummy we tend to take the easiest way out and feed it crap from a box or a window when that's the most important time we should be concentrating on healthy, vibrant, nutritious foods?  Crazy but human. It's just too easy these days to grab bad food when we feel bad and save cooking for when we feel better.  Sad, but true.

But hey, I'm back, and today I made my new favorite all day spaghetti sauce that's actually packed with, yes three meats, but also tons of fresh veggies and isn't overloaded with fat.  This sauce is not your average hamburger and tomato sauce sauce. It has three meats:  sirloin (chunks and ground), pork chops, and Italian sausage.  It's finished out with five vegetables and a host of seasonings. Normally, I'm not a huge meat eater, not because I don't like the taste but because I don't like the texture. This one is different.  From being simmered so long, the meat has the softer texture of a really good slow-cooked chili or vegetable beef soup.  With about a 40 minute prep, if you can handle two pots at once, it's a great recipe to throw into the crockpot to finish simmering while you work during the day, or sleep to us nightshifters.

This is my entry for this week's Presto Pasta Nights, created by the very cool Ruth of Once Upon a Feast, and hosted this week by Patsy of Family, Friends, and Food.  Check out both blogs on Friday to see the round-up of great pasta dishes across the blogs this week.

The Path to His Heart is....Bread Pudding?

 

 

(The first pic is of the regular bread pudding with cherry sauce that I took to work. The second pic is the Evan Williams Egg Nog bread pudding Gene, Aunti Miranda, and I shared...with a little extra floating pool of EWEN, of course!)

Hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day. I could say that I spent all day Saturday in the kitchen whipping up a gloriously gourmet meal for Gene but that would be a lie, although we had a lovely evening nonetheless.  I slept in all Saturday morning and then we hooked up with friends Corbin & Jennifer and James & Lynn to go to Rodizio's for dinner.  Rodizio's is one of those Brazilian themed restaurants where they serve a cold salad bar and then carvers come tableside with a dozen different grilled meats "on a stick" as Gene says. The boys were in heaven, and although I'm not normally a huge meat eater, lamb is one of my favorites and they do a couple of beautiful fish dishes and a grilled pineapple that's to die for. We all ate a wonderful meal and then came back to our house to sit and chat for a while.

Lynn stayed over at our house since James had to be at work at 4am which I greedily offered her the chance to stay with us so we could girl talk until 4am while Gene slept and then we napped and got up and went to breakfast at Ziggie's.  Hey, it's a girl thing but made for a really fun Valentine's Day for us.

On the other hand, the week before was filled with two, TWO, different huge home-made bread puddings so it's not like Gene didn't get his sweet tooth on last week!

I had a box full of stale croissants and a loaf of french bread I didn't want to waste so I ended up making an Evan Williams egg nog bread pudding and one regular with cherry topping.

Like a lot of people I don't really use a recipe anymore for bread pudding because there are so many choices that depend on what's in my pantry but I'll walk you through how I do it.

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Salad Dressings

(Great photo but I can't claim it.  For more salad ideas, see this and more at www.saladaday.org )

Salad dressings are my personal poison, along with Coca-cola. Fat and sugar, always my frenemies. I could eat salad three meals a day if only I could find dressings that taste like home-made rich, fatty, tongue-pleasing bleu cheese without calorie counts in ten digits.  Auntie Miranda and my friend, Ashley, have been helping me on this quest so I will gladly plagiarize their experimentations.  Okay, okay. I want to sound like I'm being evil but, really, they gave me permission.

Click on the link below for low cal/low fat salad dressings: two versions of Poppyseed and a Blueberry vinaigrette..

Diet update:  I've now lost 2.5% of my body weight so I'm 1/4 to my minimum goal of losing 10% of my body weight before Halloween.  The 10% goal is based on studies showing that for people with a significant amount of weight to lose, even 10% reduction will bring positive effects to health such as reducing blood pressure. 

So after I got back on the eating healthy bandwagon, I've done a little better about not drinking soda at work and not eating carrot cake from the cafeteria every time I have a difficult patient.

I'm getting more exercise too.  My friend Barb, from work, and I are going to water aerobics  The hilarious part is--we're the YOUNGEST people there!  But it really is a great workout for my knee and we're doing well.  We use the heaviest water weights for the arms workout and I can feel it the next day. We also actually DO the routines instead of just standing in the water gabbing like a lot of people around us. Not that I'm judging, I'm just saying Barb and I are working the routines.  We went two days last week. I also went to an hour belly dancing class one day which is like an hour ab workout.  It's harder than I thought it would be.  We were all sweating at the end so it was cardio as well.  I felt good about it.  Plus, I've been wearing a pedometer to work and I walked a total of 13 miles in three shifts and I did compressions at a code, trading out with Brian, for almost 40 minutes.  If you don't think that's a workout, you should be inside my chest, back, and arm muscles afterwards!  So to recap that's 3 exercise classes, 13 miles walked, and 20 minutes of compressions.  Not too bad.

Next week my goal is to go to water aerobics twice, go to bellydancing class once, and bike at least once, on top of the walking during work.  I'm trying to start small, do things I like, and not beat myself up if I don't accomplish everything I'd love, in my head, to do.  That goes for food and exercise, and doubly for the rest of the my life as well.

New Mostaccioli Recipe & Some Housekeeping Items

First of all, after giving that shortcut mostaccioli recipe a week or so ago right after my knee surgery, I decided to do it again only in the longcut version and using a couple of new recipes.  The first is my reworking of a recipe for Olive Garden's Alfredo recipe (by the way, you gained 5 lbs and got 10 minutes closer to your future heart attack just now from simply reading the word "Alfredo") and a new spaghetti sauce spice mix I put together for a friend who's having severe emotional distress about Paris Hilton's incarceration Lawry's decision to stop production on "Spatini" spaghetti sauce mix. 

My friend, Cindy, wrote me asking if I had any idea where to find a copycat recipe and after combining a few Googled recipes, don't know if my mix will exactly match Spatini but after tonight's trial run I know it's pretty good.  I made up a batch of the mix for her to try out before investing a paycheck in McCormicks' since she doesn't keep all twelve, or whatever, herbs and spices individually in her cabinet like I do.  I put them in a pretty little jar and shipped them off to her today.  I suppose most people would have gone the whole way of finding a small box, grabbing some newspaper to crumple, and pack the jar in but I'm much too lazy for that. I simply masking taped the jar lid to make sure it didn't come off (not screw on) and walked it in naked in my hand to my local UPS Store.  I've used them a lot for gifts when I don't have time to wrap. For a couple extra bucks they'll wrap, pack, and track your parcel across the country. 

Let me share with you what I learned today.  Imagine you were me, walking in to your local UPS Store with a clear jar chock full of dried greenish "herby" bits...and all the workers at the counter are college aged...and there are several customers in the store around you....now.....just think about that for a moment in a way that I didn't as I obliviously trotted in and said "I need to mail this to Woonsocket, please."  And then the kid at the counter with a big grin that I was sure in my naivete at the time would make him employee of the year because he was just so darn friendly, asked "What is it?"  And I, being stupid, answered "Just some home-made stuff for a friend..."

Cindy, the Narcs will be waiting for you when you pick up that box.  Sorry, dudette.

So here is the dinner, not as pretty as the other mostaccioli pic, but tasty none-the-less, and the recipes for both the Alfredo and the home-made, wink wink, Spatini are after the jump.

With all the herbs in the non-Spatini Spatini mix, especially my favorite Italian trio of basil, oregano, and thyme, the mostaciolli is my entry this week for Weekend Herb Blogging, created by the wonderful Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen, and hosted this week by Rachel of Rachel's Bite.  Run by her blog later in the week to see all the herby dishes being created around the world, most of them hopefully legal.

Now on to some other miscellaneous stuff that I keep either forgetting to talk about or little things I just want to throw in here:

1)  I remember a little while back I was asked what my new camera is and I keep forgetting to say.  It's no big deal at all but I appreciate the asking.  I did have a Kodak something or other for several years but it has been slowly dying for the last year. I finally got fed up, went to a local camera shop, told them what I use it for which is basically not much. I'm not a big photographer so I just needed something super easy that takes decent pics and that I can't screw up. Really. That last part was the most important.  I just want it to read my mind and give me what I want. Is that too much to ask of an inanimate object?  Much the same as what I want from my husband.

I ask for so little in this world.

So when I talked to the nice man at the counter, Itold him I could only spend up to $200, fully expecting for him to sneer and get on the intercom and point me out as being a lily livered lost sales cause, but instead,   he said "you don't really need to spend that much.  I can get you a basic little Nikon that will have more functions and better pictures than what you have now and I'm pretty sure you'll be happy."  He was right.  It's just a little Nikon Coolpix L10 ($120) and I love it.  Takes better pics, has some zoom, takes video, all things my other cursed camera didn't do.  I am happy.  And I'm personally going to petition God to let him in heaven without hassle because he's the first salesman in my life who didn't lie, didn't only show me items that were at or over my budget, and he was nice.  Nice, I tells ya.  I've never really met a nice salesman before.

I'm putting him on my Christmas card list. 

He's my new best friend.  He, on the other hand is wishing he'd never sold me a camera because as my new best friend I emailed him pics of my new $4 Walgreen's thong sandals and asked for his opinion of if they make my toes look fat.  He didn't answer so I guess that means they make my toes look cute.  Right?  You see the logic here?

2)  In the realm of--Isn't this cute?--I finally ate (okay gave to the nieces) the last of the turtle cookies my fantabulous co-workers got for me following my surgery and at the bottom was this way cool cookie holder. I've made cookie bouquets before of my own using a basket and floral foam but check this out:

How cool is that? It holds something like 21 cookies!  So the next time I make a cookie bouquet for a sick friend there's going to have to be a return deposit on the container.  You know, something along the lines of "give this back or I'll burn your house down".  You know, something just stern enough to be listened to.

3)  Along the lines of alwasy be prepared and do so months in advance, I'm going to offer all of us some family Christmas party advice. Oh, nothing I thought of myself, but it is a great piece of advice that I found in a magazine at my surgeon's office.  It was so inspired to come home with me that it ripped itself out and made its way magically into my purse when no one I wasn't looking.

So heed this this wisdom on how to cope with horrifying family holiday parties because it was bought at the price of my integrity. From the November 2005 Oprah, and God knows anything Oprah prints is true because Oprah is God herself,

"The single best way to cope with familial turmoil is to give up the hope that your relatives will suddenly become cornucopias of emotional health.  It's true.  Your family of origin should give unconditional love, wisdome, and insite. And this will happen right after your hamster publishes its novel.  Instead of yearning for the a perfec tfamily, listen to teach Byron Katie, author of the book I Need Your Love--Is That True?  "If I had a prayer," she writes, "it would be this:  God spare me from the desire for love, approval, and appreciation.Amen."  This sound sharsh if you've never experienced freedome from these desires, which comes when you accept yourself."

I do believe that, so much so in fact that I will stand up in front of all of you right now and say that I no longer desire anyone's love, approval, or appreciation, if that's alright with you.

4)Check this out--The City Bakery in LA is selling Paris Hilton cupcakes complete with nail file (okay popsicle stick but I LOVE the fun of these). I found the pic/story on the famous TMZ website. Check them out. They're much better at reporting celeb news than Perez Hilton and they don't kiss Miss HIlton's "buttchops", as my deaf niece referred to her "buttocks" today.  www.tmz.com

5) And for our final little goldmine of the day...remember back when I did that really stupid thing and made those oils with the fresh herbs?  Then remember when I came back and told you to really, really, really, NEVER do that thing with the fresh herbs in oil?  Yeah, well, remember when a couple of you smartasses (Kyleen and Sher) said "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if you grew a biological weapon and then photographed it for us?"

Do I deny you people anything? Of course not.

So here you go, kiddoes.  Photographic proof that putting fresh herbs in oil is a really stupid thing to do. Well, to be fair, putting them in isn't stupid if your intent is to poison someone but since that's not real high on most people's to-do list, we can put it firmly in the stupid category for the biggest proportion of the population.

Look, rejoice, and revel in all that botulism can be when left on the window sill unchecked.  Yum!

See what looks like cutesy cotton all around the thyme?  That would be clouds of noxious bacteria.  Put it down and walk away.

See all those little specs of white on the peppers?  I have no clue on this planet without a plate of agar what the hell that is.  I'm guessing probably nothing high on the county health inspector's "good" list.

The two on the left were both canola oil. The two on the right were olive oil. The olive oil subjects fared a little better with no visible bacteria.  My personal guess is the acid in the olives is keeping the bacteria in check but don't quote me on it.  But hey, my name's not Mikey and I'm not eatin' it.  Tomorrow they all get tossed.

So the next time you feel like emulating me on something like this, think harder.  But most of the rest of what I do won't get you into too much trouble. 

Gotta Have Me Some Balsamic Syrup

Scallops with Balsamic Vinegar Syrup

I could not get that balsamic vinegar syrup from the grilled peaches out of my mind.  It was so perfectly balanced in sweet, sour, and spicy that I cleaned the pan out with a spatula to eat by itself while the peaches grilled. 

So what do you do when you have an addiction?  You want it with and on everything.  I started with scallops. Who knows where I'll end up.  I winged it last night just to see what would happen.  It came out so perfect and so perfectly easy I almost feel guilty.