A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Veggie Patty-licious

This is the story of how these ingredients:

became dinner:

It all started with the book "Skinny Bitch" by  Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman, a "diet" book with colorful language that cracked me up and inspired me.  The book basically advocates vegan eating.  I'll be honest. The book itself didn't give me any new info.  I've heard this all before. I read Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation and I lived in Eureka Springs, which is the Taos of the Ozarks. I've heard the whole cruelty to animals speech and I do not dispute it. I just freely admit that it never before kept me away from a tall glass of milk or a medium rare filet. 

Until Skinny Bitch. For some reason, the presentation whether it's simply the confrontational attitude or the multitudinous amount of swear words (which I loved, by the way) made me pay attention this time. Still, to be completely honest, it's not even the PETA speech that gets me, it's just that I suddenly thought "I've never really liked eating meat...so why am I doing it?"  I could get up on a big moral high horse and tell you that I've been enlighted and that the poor fish hurt from being hooked but that really isn't me or how I think.  We're people; they're animals. We're the top of the food chain.  I'm middle America all the way and I know it. I grew up in a family of hunters in a community of hunters.  My dad and his friends took vacation time to go out in the deer field every year.  My siblings and I all knew how to cast a fishing line practically before we could walk.  BUT, unlike a former acquaintance whose father goes to Africa twice a year to shoot big game just so he can hang heads and skins on his den walls, my family ate what dad brought down. We grew up poor and I admit my dad poached deer like crazy to put meat on our table. I still have no problem with that at all, nor do I have a problem with people who do eat meat.  On the flip side, I've known for a long time that as long as I eat a varied vegetarian diet I'll get plenty of protein and I'm very well aware that factory farms are not the same thing as hunting a deer or two out in their natural habitat for my family's personal use and to keep the deer populations from starving themselves out.  One is conservation; the other is a really poor process that's mostly about dollars not purity of food or compassion for animals. Of course, I don't like the idea of factory farming animals in cruel ways although I stop short at the argument that if we didn't eat cows the ozone  layer would be safe from cow farts. 

I know I'm simplifying but I'm doing it to keep things light not because I take these things lightly.

My point is, in a nutshell, I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not.  For me, this is all about how nice it would be to get off the protein guilt merry-go-round and not worry about it all the time. I can't tell you how many years I've spent preferring to eat a quinoa salad or a vegetable salad with a thick piece of whole-grained peasant bread but denying myself thinking I had to eat a hunk of meat. Well, no more. I'm not completely locking myself in because, quite frankly, I don't do well with ever telling myself "no" to anything without a rebellious back door to escape thorugh when I feel the need, but over the last few weeks the only animal flesh I've had is teeny amount of chicken in soup, part of a crab cake, and two bites of Gene's birthday steak.  I just don't crave meat so I'm getting off the guilt ride, South Beach and Atkins be damned.

Earlier in the year, I went on a 3 month diet with coworkers and lost 20 lbs.  Since then I've gained back 8 lbs followed by losing 4 lbs the first week I stopped eating meat, followed by I'm-not-sure-what-but-it-can't-be-good (I refuse to get on the scale) since this horrible past week where I've been ravenous at night and the voices in my head won't shut up until I feed them popcorn covered in butter and melted marshmallow at 2am.  Being inside my own head is like living out a Stephen King novel behind my eyes at times.

Cleaning out the fridge of my mind...

This post is going to be about several things so don't let the jumping around trip you up, it's just my ADD mind at work.

First off, Julie of Noshtalgia tagged me for the 8 Things Meme. Thanks, Julie. This is a fun one!

 

8 Things You Didn't Know About Me:

1.  All of my books look like hell because I read in the bathtub. I've only ever actually dropped one in but the steam really messes up the pages.

2.  I made ice cream for a living for a while but the cold from the deep freezers kept making me sick.  Guess what? That's how I found out I have asthma.

3.  I have a not-so-secret addiction to both Sonic vanilla limeades and Braum's regular limeades.  I like the vanilla from Sonic but the Braum's limeades are more tart. it's a mood kind of thing.

4.  One of the kids in Respiratory School nick-named me "G Spot", hence the name of my personal blog.

5.  Gene and I are such character actor fans that we play a game. Whenever we see an actor that rings a bell with us we try to name as many credits as we can before we go look the person up on the Internet Movie Database.   For example, on last week's episode of Big Love, the owner of the video poker machine company (Jim Beaver) played Mr. Ellsworth, the mine foreman who married the Widow Garrett on Deadwood.  See how that works? 

Let me tell you, it took ME a full season before I figured out Ted Levine, Captain Stuttlemeyer on Monk.  Gene got it right away and laughed his A** off at me every time I'd sit and miss the plot of Monk because I was saying out loud "WHERE IN THE HELL HAVE I HEARD THAT VOICE BEFORE?"  Finally, one night Gene said, as I was washing up the dishes or something, "Hey, come watch this movie with me."  I took one look at the screen and said "I've seen that a million times."  But as I turned around to leave the room, I heard HIS VOICE, whipped and around and screamed "NO F****** WAY!" 

Anybody get what I'm talking about?

6.  Halloween is my favorite holiday.

7.  I'm from the south in my heart even if I technically miss it geographically by about 30 miles, so it hurts me to admit I hate "swet eye tay", known to the rest of the country as "sweet iced tea".  Straight up and with several slices of lemon, please.  I like a little tea in my lemon water, to be more accurate.

8.  For some reason, I have no idea why, I accomplish writing more pages on my novel when I'm sitting in a restaurant or pub with blaring music and people talking all around me than I ever do sitting in my quiet office typing on the computer.  I call those excusions the Hemingway Writing Tour.

I tag the following people along with anyone who sees this and would like to "reveal" themselves:

Kyleen @ The Texan New Yorker

Deborah @ Taste & Tell

Cynthia @ Tastes Like Home

Tanna @ My Kitchen in Half Cups

Alisha @ Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

The New Mrs. Q :-) @ Butta Buns

Margaret @ Kitchen - Delights

Rachel @ Foodie Rachel

Brian @ Recipes for the Future

Mehgan@ A Craving for Perfection

Candy @ Eat Here Get Gas (love that name)

Jaden @ Steamy Kitchen

Check out this cake made by Muffin of Never Bashful with Butter for Sauce TV.  This is a gal who bakes cakes and makes lychee & lime martinis. Well, hell, I'm thinking I found a new friend.  She runs two blogs. The full story and more pics of the cake are here at A Muffin Story.

Next, a couple of new blogs I've seen lately--

Mehgan, stationed in Washington with the Coast Guard, is an avid baker who not only has her husband to cook for but a very eager little brother. She's at A Craving for Perfection.

Brian, another Missouri blogger, writes Recipes for the Future.  One of the things that got my attention was his suggestion of adding a bit of cardamom (you know I love that) or cinnamon to the crust of a cheesecake to turn the flavor up a notch.

I love that Denise at Plain Ol Food isn't afraid to blog her disappointments along with her triumphs, along with some cute pics of family.

Jaden at Steamy Kitchen has great food and THE MOST adorable pics of her two pre-school boys helping her make German Baked Pancakes.  These boys are going to be heartbreakers someday, gorgeous and good in the kitchen. Reminds me of Paula Deen's sons...

And finally, click below for the recipe Thomas Keller created for the signature title of the movie Ratatouille.  I haven't seen the film yet but can't wait.  The New York Times ran an article talking about how Keller (The French Laundry) was consulted on every step of kitchen and cooking in the movie and that he was very impressed by their dedication to getting it right, even down to how the knife work looks.

I'm so jealous. Become an animator for Pixar, get to take cooking lessons from Thomas Keller.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Hmmm...it's Friday...this would be a good movie day, don't you think?

Also, I find this really clever and amusing but wish I could remember where I saw it. On some message board, I saw a posting by a couple who said that their baker went out of business ONE MONTH prior to their wedding. Rather than let it ruin the celebration, they notified close friends and family what had happened and had guests, if they wanted to participate, bring a single cake to the wedding which they then had sort of a mock cake contest.  I really loved that. I think it showed a great deal of that couple's character.  I used to plan weddings for a living so I've seen the kind of brides who would have let the cake thing ruin their wedding and seen it as a tragedy and a victimization.  It did suck. Truly. But I loved the way that couple turned the situation into something fun and very memorable. So memorable that for the next wedding in my family I might even suggest it.

Corn: The Taste of Summer

Is therre anything that screams summer more than crisp, buttery, golden, fresh corn on, or off, the cob? I don't think so either.  Hands down the absolute best is corn roasted on the grill in their husks and then slathered with butter and maybe a little juice pour from the jalapeno jar (in my case), but even inside the house, hovering protectively within the air conditioning, that corn stripped from its cobs and lightly sauteed on the stove top in a heavy bottomed skillet liberally doused in butter and salt, is still pretty good too. Throw in a little chopped dill or rosemary or chives and it's even better.  Two fresh tastes for one moment of your time.

Thankfully, we're only beginning summer because I almost hate watching the last ear of corn go more than I hate picking the last tomato come off the vine.

Pampered Chef Party-- A Success!

I'll show some people pics later but I'll be honest they didn't come out well.  You know how we food bloggers are, we can capture the essence of cheese but not of Charles.  So hey, let's not feel bad about doing what we do better or best, right?

So for food pics, here's one of the overall food table:

Starting at the loaf of bread cake at top and going clockwise:  vegetable skewers, spinach dip, olives stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoni bread, cheese, homemade-ish onion dip, and crackers. On the stove was a pot of homemade Chicken Noodle soup.  That seemed to go over well. I made 5 quarts and when everyone had left there was only one medium-ish individual bowl left of mostly broth.  My chicken noodle soup recipe can be found HERE.  Funny, the last time I served it was at a girls' night party. Hmmm...I have to rememeber it always goes over well.

The one sort of funny thing is that most of the veggies skewers weren't eaten.  Several people commented that they thought they were beautiful but I can't figure out if no one wants to be the guy to dismantle it, or what?  If anyone from the party is reading, let me know what you were thinking.  This is my favorite way to make a veg tray but when I do people always make a point of oohing and ahhing but not of eating. 

Directions for the veggie bucket set-up after the jump.

The cake:

From another angle:

I liked it once I got the whole thing finished and all of the stuff set up around it.  It's funny because I only see the flaws and all the trouble I had with it but a couple of people who were there didn't realize at first it was a cake and not a loaf of bread. That made my night!

With the exception of the salt cellar on the right, everything you see in this pic (okay except the platter and lines) is made of sugar. The cake is coconut layer cake with coconut buttercream filling, covered in fondant and hand-painted with a pastry brush.  The utensils to the left are sculpted from gumpaste.

Here's a close up of the vegetable skewers. This is my favorite way to make a vegetable tray--vertical!

Everyone just left. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Hope so. I know I did.  After the main presentation part of the Pampered Chef demonstration was over we basically sat and yacked about everything from eating rabbit and squirrels to Paris Hilton and her constant flashing of her squirrel. It was a bit of a running theme.

My friend Jennifer brought me knock off Paris Hilton perfume.  Ahhhhh, how much I loved it! Really. It's fun.  I love the thought of wearing the version she makes no money from.  Hee.  Jenn, you did mean for me to keep that, right?  Uhhhh, if not drop me an email. I just sort of assumed.

Ashley did a great job with the presentation and made fabulous Jerk (no men involved in case you were wondering like some of the rest of us) Chicken Salad.

Here's Ashley:

More tomorrow along with recipes for the coconut cake. Recipes are now posted. Click below. Also, there are more personal pics from the party on my personal blog, G's Spot.

UPDATE ON SHER'S CAKE:  UPS shows the cake as being scanned and leaving Springfield on the big jet 15 minutes ago and is scheduled to be on time for delivery by 10:30am in the morning. So far so good! Sher will let us all know the minute it arrives and what shape it showed up in.

UPDATE AGAIN ON SHER'S CAKE:  UPS shows it loggin in at midnight in the Kentucky depot and still listed for on time delivery.

LAST UPDATE BEFORE DELIVERY:  Sher's cake was logged in and then out again from Mather CA between 5am and 5:30am, then it arrived in West Sacramento at 7:05 and was then logged in at the truck for deliver by 7:15am this morning.  Wow. I'm impressed. 

UPDATE UPDATE:  It ARRIVED!  Go to www.whatdidyoueat.typepad.com to see Sher's reaction!

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Look Ma! The Cauliflower's Changin' Colors!

Aunt Miranda sent a bag of goodies over the other day from her favorite produce department.  It's always fun when she does that (thank you, Auntie Miranda!) because it gives me new fun veggies to play with.  I'd heard of these but never actually had any in my hands.

That got me thinking about cauliflower. I love it: raw, cooked, pureed (the fake mashed potatoes), fried with lemon sauce (super yum).  My husband hates it.  The smell alone drives him away.  And I don't blame him.  Some people can get past it, some can't. Personally, I love cooked cauliflower but I've never been able to get past the smell of turnips cooking.  To each his own.

In any color, cauliflower is very good for you.  More so than you might think. For example, 1 cup of raw cauliflower gives you the recommended daily intake of Vitamin C, a powerful antioxidant.  On that basis alone, cauliflower is on the hit parade of "good for you" vegetables and is my addition this week to Cate at Sweetnick's Antioxidant Rich Foods/5-A-Day weekly event.  Check out Cate's site for more ARF foods.

Simple is Sometimes Best

Dinner was a very simple and easy roasted veggies and fish with a Harry & David Rosemary and Thyme grilling marinade.  Yum. Very nice. Glad I opened that bottle. I'll be swathing the roasties in that until it runs dry.  The veggies are simple. I put a kettle of water on to boil and parboil the veggies one type at a time just to get everything to come out in the even cooking time department and then throw the fish on the baking pan for the last 10 minutes. Couldn't be more simple.

My roasty veggies and fish with their rosemary/thyme marinade are my addition to this weeks Weekend Herb Blogging, created by Kalyn at Kalyn's Kitchen, and hosted this week by Rinku of Cooking in Westchester. Check out her blog later in the week to see this week's round up.

Doctor's Kitchen Monday: Brussel Sprouts gone wild

Continuing my quest for healthier meals, I've decided to become attached to the lowly brussel sprout, or "cabbage fetuses" as my husband eloquently(?) calls them.  I have a confession: I don't like them.  I try to like them. I want to be their friend but they just don't play nice in my mouth.

But I am a stubborn determined woman.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Our St. Paddy's feast consisted of broiled lamb chops with my FAVORITE: chimichurri sauce, and a sort of colcannon recipe by way of Louisiana.  It's an Emeril recipe with all the right ingedients but mixed up a little differently.  My husband likes potatoes, kale (cabbage), and bacon, but not all mixed together in his mashed potatoes.  That's sacriledge in the Church of Gene, who by the way is, like George Carlin, a frisbyterian. He believes that when he dies his soul will go sit on the roof and refuse to come down.  So I'll leave his mashed potatoes chaste and for another day but for tonight we're eating potatoes and cabbage. I found a great Emeril recipe that I will be making again and again, basically it's potato and cabbage quarters roasted with a topping of bacon and onion.  And yes, it is every bit as good as it sounds.  Pork fat does indeed rule, although I admit I just couldn't allow myself to cook a whole 12 oz of bacon for this dish and limited it to 6 slices which is still bad enough. But what the heck. It's a holiday.

The lamb chops are simply broiled to medium and topped with chimichurri sauce. Both the recipe for it and the Emeril recipe are after the jump.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Not Your Momma's Glazed Carrots

I cannot express what a fan of Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen I am.  They appeal to both halves of my brain, I think. I absolutely love the way they intellectually pick apart each recipe logically and then reconstruct it with the passion of true food artists.  I cannot recommend highly enough "The New Best Recipe" Cookbook as a general cookbook either. I replaced my old Better Homes & Gardens general cookbook (wedding gift) that was literally falling apart with the NBR from Cook's Illustrated and now I keep wondering why I didn't break open my wallet years ago. I enjoy reading it just for the sake of reading all the comparisons and background on their recipe testing and there hasn't been a recipe I've used so far that I haven't said "Wow, that really IS the best."

I had a wild craving for glazed carrots the other day which surprised me because as a child I loved my mother's glazed carrots but when I made them years later as an adult they seemed like squishy orange yuck drowned in maple syrup. Don't get me wrong. My mom was a fantastic cook. It's just that everyone used to make glazed carrots basically the same way: cook the carrots and add butter and brown sugar.  Fini.   

Not good enough.

Along came Cook's Illustrated to the rescue.  Their search for the perfect recipe included:

"Chicken broth as a cooking liquid lent the carrots savory backbone and a full, round flavor, whearas water left them hollow and wine turned them sour and astringent. We tried swapping the sugar for more compelling sweeteners but found brown sugar too muddy-flavored, maple syrup too assertive, and honey too floral...  We moved on to finessing the glaze..."

Yes, they did.  The cookbook contains the original, straightforward "Glazed Carrots" recipe but I went a leap forward to one of their two variations on that theme and made the "Glazed carrots with Bacon and Pecans"  (which does have brown sugar in it, by the way,  they found it to work best with the bacon and nuts) substituting walnuts for pecans just because I felt like it.

They are absolutely right. This recipe has lots of savory backbone, full round flavor, and just enough sweet to make your mouth water and keep your fork digging in for more.  This recipe will definitely be on my hit list parade of veggies. 

Also seasoned with thyme, this recipe is my addition to Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen's wonderful Weekend Herb Blogging event, this week hosted by Ed of Tomato. Check out his blog and his round up later in the week.

Bad Weather Equals Comfort Food in Our House

Because of the weather, not only did I work my normal weekend last weekend, I also worked overtime trying to help out with the staff shortages. Of course there were lots of people who live outside town who weren't able to come in.  So now that I'm off for a few days I decided to go back to our comfort roots and treat Gene to some of his favorite meals. Especially since he had sit at home by himself playing solitaire by gas firelight, eating whatever he could scrounge, the one day we were without power.  I teased him on the phone that day from work asking if he remembered how to play solitaire with an actual deck of cards. He laughed and said it took a few minutes but it's like riding a bike, you eventually remember the feel of the cards in your hand instead of the click of the mouse.

Last night was Salisbury steak with cream gravy, succotash which I've shown here before, mashed red potatoes with skins, and garlic bread sticks from the freezer.  You would have thought I'd served him a 5-star meal. It's always amazing and slightly confusing to me how the meals we grew up making our mother's sides, the ones that we cook on autopilot and choose because we really don't feel like putting effort into cooking for whatever reason, those are the meals that get the ravest reviews at my house.  Sure, when I go all out, Gene is appreciative.  But the biggest literal gut satisfaction is from the basic southern comfort food we grew up on.  There is something soul-satisfying about eating the food of our youth, although Gene being a smart and sweet man, tells me all the time I'm a much better cook than his mother.  :-)