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Stop and Smell the Roses

A few months ago Val texted me and asked if Bob and I would like to join her and Bill in Portland for a beer festival. Portland has been on our travel list for a while, but when Val asked, we still had Jessie and were pretty uncertain about what we could do. I also had to look at my school stuff and figure out if I could make it work. Well, with Jessie no longer with us, we started talking about it and looking at it and decided, sure. We can make this work.

There were two things on my list that I absolutely wanted to do. One was a wine tour (more on that in another post) and one was the Rose Garden. I *love* flowers and roses, while not my favorite flower, remind me of dad and grandmom. I still remember dad pruning the tea roses out front of the first house we lived in and mom’s mom grew these bushes of roses that always just amazed me. On our first full day in Portland we walked to Washington Park and hit the rose garden first. I could have spent the whole day there.

The rose garden is probably not as huge as I imagine it, but there were several sections including test roses and gold medal roses. There were roses of every color, of every size and they were all in full bloom. I actually stopped and smelled the roses. And lingered and took pictures, but really, I just basked in the roses.

The Rose Garden alone made going to Portland worth it. And this is coming from someone who usually plans trips around food and history. But for Portland, it was the roses. And the wine, but again, that is another post all together.

 

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Soba noodles

Noodles.  How can anyone not like noodles? I fully admit, I’m a sucker for good noodle dishes, and once I stopped overcooking soba noodles, they have become a real favorite. I can make them a little like a stir fry – make a sauce, lightly cook up some vegetables, maybe add some nuts on top – and you have dinner. Or lunch, but usually dinner.


I looked around at a lot of recipes – I wanted something spicy but maybe a little sweet. I wanted peanut for some reason, but not a heavy peanut sauce. I read a lot of recipes, but when it came to making dinner, I decided to just wing it. After all, if it doesn’t work, we’ll just order pizza.

So I started with what I had in the fridge. Snow peas, bean sprouts (was going to make pad thai and I changed my mind), carrots, yellow pepper, scallions. Amounts … here is my best guess:

  • 2 carrots, cut into matchsticks
  • 3 scallions, white and light green parts
  • 1/4 yellow pepper
  • one handful bean sprouts
  • 2 handfuls snow peas

Ok, that works for the vegetables. Canola oil to cook them in – have that. Now for a sauce. Here is what I went with (Bob had me write it down as soon as we finished dinner – he really liked this one):

  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 2 tablespoons peanut butter
  • 1 tablespoon chili garlic sauce
  • 1.5 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey

Cook the noodles slightly less than the package says – I went with 2 minutes. drain and run cold water over to stop the cooking.


While the water boiled I chopped and then quick sautéed the vegetables (not the bean sprouts) – about three minutes cooking. Once the noodles were done I added them to the pan and tossed everything in the sauce. Add the bean sprouts, toss again. Done.

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Falafel Burger

Every now and then I want a burger. It doesn’t have to be a hamburger, but just that patty on a bun thing. With fries.  Have to have the fries. It’s probably all about the fries and not really about the burger, but it might be a little bit about the burger.

The grocery stores have a good variety of veggie burgers these days, but there is something about making your own that appeals to me. And since I had a little bit of time I decided to try it.

I found a recipe that looked pretty appealing. I still had leftover chipotle bbq sauce that I made the other week and this recipe called for BBQ sauce in the burger mix. I like bbq burgers, so why not. I did modify the recipe a little – in place of breadcrumbs I used oats. Not to make it gluten free but because I didn’t have breadcrumbs on hand. (Weird, I know) I also used less of some ingredients and more of others than the recipe called for – in other words I did exactly what I always do with recipes, I use them as a suggestion and basic guide.

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And because I was making burgers, I made fries – my favorite kind of fries, homemade sweet potato fries. These are stupidly simple to make – cut up sweet potato, coat in oil, salt and pepper and bake at 400 for about 20 minutes. Done. Slightly salty, slightly sweet and comfort food in its best form.

I froze the remaining burger mix as patties so I can just pop them in the oven and have a quick meal when needed. If I make them again, I will remember to not use the food processor on the vegetables – give the burger a little more texture. But overall, I really liked these and like that I have a simple home made burger base to work from. Bob liked them too, but to him they were more a variation on falafel than a burger, so we’ve dubbed these falafel burgers.

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Catching Up

It’s been busier than anticipated around here. I can’t pin point exactly why, but every time I think about making a post, the time gets away from me. Here it is – half way through July – and I’m still feeling like I have a thousand things to do. Part of this is school (cramming semester classes into eight weeks will do that).

I did manage to make a few delicious things over the weeks. I took leftover quinoa taco filling and made nachos. Oh my! I think in the few weeks since I discovered this, I’ve made these four or five times. Yes, they are that good.

It’s a simple concept, really. Chips – the kind we usually use for dipping with salsa – into a buttered pan. You probably don’t need to butter the pan, but I’m always afraid of things sticking and the burning, so buttered pan it is. On top of the chips I added roasted corn (or pan roasted if I’m being lazy) and the quinoa taco filling. To that I added regular queso and some shredded Gruyère because that is what I had on hand. A cheddar or cheese mix would work just as well here. I then repeated with a second layer of everything and tossed them in a 375 degree oven for ten minutes.

While the chips and cheese were melting, I made the salsa topping. I used the leftover tomato, red onion and lime salsa from the tacos, added a little more tomato and some scallion and tossed. I did add a little salt, but no more lime juice. Once the chips were out of the oven, I plated them and added the tomato mix on top. The results … perfection. I had these about 20 minutes before Bob got home for lunch, and the man is lucky I love him so much or I would not have saved him any. Seriously, it was almost the Truffle Mac & Cheese incident all over.

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It is also mango season and I had to get a mango at the farmer’s market the other week. I wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it, but I decided on Mango Panna Cotta. I love this stuff and it is stupidly simple to make. I started with half of David Leibovitz’s recipe and puree’d the mango that I had on hand. I did use regular gelatin in the recipe because I still had some in the cabinet, so these weren’t exactly vegetarian, but it works for now. If I can find Agar in my grocery, I’m swapping the next time I need a gelatin like ingredient. But I digress … I made the basic mixture then added about a half cup of pureed mango to it, poured into glasses, let it set for an hour and then added more to the top of each panna cotta. Dessert.

We also took the kitties to the vet last week. Yes, all three at once. They are all healthy and doing well and the vet was impressed with how well Ms. Leia was doing. It’s hard to believe they are all nine years old now!

 

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EMT (Eggplant, Tomato, Mozzarella)

I love bacon, but I don’t like eating meat. I love the salty, smoky flavor bacon can give a sandwich or a salad. Given this, I got really excited when I saw this recipe for eggplant bacon. I like eggplant, I like smoky, I like to experiment in the kitchen, so let’s try it.

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I wasn’t exactly sure what I would do with the bacon once I made it, but I knew I would come up with something. I borrowed mom’s mandolin and Bob sliced the eggplant very thin for me. The fist baking went ok – but I have to remember to only use one rack in the oven at a time. The marinade was easy to make and the eggplant strips looked so good waiting to go in the oven.

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My first sheet, I way over cooked. The recipe called for a 350 degree oven and about twelve minutes. By 8 minutes my eggplant was charred, so I reduced my oven temp to 325 and kept the next sheet in for five minutes. This worked well. Really well.

I’m also a sucker for a good tomato mozzarella sandwich. I love the combination and decided – why not add bacon? I had some bread from lunch Saturay and I toasted those and then added a little pesto, the eggplant bacon, mozzarella, and tomato. I did begin to add some cabbage, but ended up ditching that – it just didn’t add anything. The result – fantastic. The eggplant actually added something really delicious to the sandwich and it satisfied the minor bacon craving without requiring that I eat meat. This is a definite do again, but I have to be cautious with the slices and the cooking time.

I also have a cute picture of Leia and Tigger. They do like to curl up together and I think it’s just adorable.

 

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Cake

I fully admit I love cake. It’s more the icing or filling, especially if it is a creamy filling that I just find myself slightly addicted to. I also get cravings for specific cakes – strawberry shortcake, lemon cake, vanilla cake with vanilla icing.

Lately I’ve had a craving for a specific cake, but I have no idea what it is called. I had it in Austria and at our local German restaurant, but they just call it a Cream Cake. I looked up Cream Cake and Creme Cake, but didn’t find what I was looking for. Well, I found a picture, but not much else. oThis is about as close to the cake I had in Austria as I can get – slightly thinner layers and more cream, but it’s about what I wanted. The picture, however, is about as close to the actual cake (or a recipe) as I got. But I did find a different recipe that looked promising and since I had a little time between school assignments, I decided to give it a try.

My first clue that this was not going to be the same should have been the cake batter. This is brioche cake, which is a cross between a bread and a cake. It’s light and has a good taste, but the texture was wrong. Not bad, just not what I was looking for. It also took a long time to make. I mean a really long time. Because this is a yeast cake, there is rising to be done. Three rises to be exact, which means multiple hours. I started the cake at 11 am and it went into the oven about 8pm. That is a long time to be waiting for cake.

But there is a cream filling. Caramel cream. I do love caramel and I do love cream, so I kind of figured, how bad could this be? (Not bad at all, it turns out.) So I start by making a caramel because well …. it’s in the recipe and its caramel. I then made the caramel into a custard and put it in the fridge over night. Before I assembled the cake the next day, I mixed up some whipped cream and folded the custard and the cream together. This worked. I could have happily eaten just the cream filling.

I asked Bob to slice the cake in half for me as my knife skills are not nearly as precise as his. He did, and we got nice even layers. I added the caramel creme to the middle and sprinkled some powdered sugar on top.

Results were good. Not amazing, but good. The filling is a keeper, but I think I still need to do some more searching before I try again.

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Quinoa Tacos (aka my newest obsession)

I have a new obsession. Yes, I get obsessed a lot with food, good food, but these are taking over my brain. Quinoa tacos. I found this recipe at a new favorite cooking blog – Minimalist Baker. Dana is pretty much a genius as everything I’ve made from her blog has been amazing. General Tso’s tofu – check. Pina Colada popsicles – check. This quinoa taco stuff … holy cow!

This started out as just another experiment and now I’m trying to figure out all the ways I can make quinoa replace meat. Possibly sloppy joes or a version of BBQ pork sandwiches? (Don’t worry, Dad, I’m still making regular pulled pork this weekend.) Bob was on board with trying it, although he did sound a tiny bit skeptical when I first mentioned it. But … I’ll say this for the man, he is willing to let me try crazy stuff so long as I am willing to admit when it doesn’t work. Fair deal I think.

So here is what I did. You could just follow the recipe from Minimalist Baker, but here you go –

I took two cups of quinoa (leftover from another meal) and added a half cup of the double roasted salsa. I love Rick Bayless and think he’s amazing, so when I do buy jarred salsa, I go to him. The double roasted tomato is smoky and spicy so I think it adds a lot to the quinoa here. I also used about 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder (because I accidentally dumped it), 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast, 2 teaspoons cumin and chili powder, little bit of salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil. I mixed well and spread it on a parchment lined baking sheet and baked it for 25 minutes.

While this baked, I grated some leftover cheese from my favorite cheese shop. I will fully admit, that when it comes to cheese, I think high quality cheese without fillers is really important. Yes, its more expensive, but trust me on this – this is not the processed cheese product of childhood. (Although I do have a soft spot for processed cheese product.) I went with an alpine style cheese because it’s what I had on hand. Any hard cheese will do, but think stronger cheeses like cheddar or Gruyère or an alpine. For the salsa, I went with my favorite combination – tomato, red onion, cilantro, lime juice and salt. That’s it. Chop the tomato and onion to desired sizes, pick and chop a few cilantro leaves. Squeeze half a lime over the whole thing, sprinkle a little salt on it and let it sit while the quinoa bakes.

For the shells, I went with conventional white corn taco shells. Yes, I could have made my own or used soft shells, but I was going for childhood memory tacos, so hard corn shells.

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These were so good, I think I like them better than the real meat stuff. Yes, I’m weird, but trust me – these are so good I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t like them. Spice and heat can be altered with the type of salsa you use and the amount of chili added. But really, this is totally great. I even made a taco salad the next day – lettuce, tomato, onion, the quinoa, a few crumbled corn chips and a cilantro lime dressing. How was that …. there were two clean plates by the end of lunch and I’m probably making this again in a week. And possibly more often than that.

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Comfort

I should mention that it has rained here this past week. A lot. We had the tropical storm come through that made mushrooms grow in my backyard. Big mushrooms. Larger than my foot mushrooms. Even the cats didn’t want anything to do with these mushrooms.

But, with all of the rain, my basil was happy. Happy and getting very big, so I decided to make one of my all time favorite (summer) comfort food dishes – pesto. I took the basil from my herb box – the one Leia doesn’t sleep in so I have some herbs – and made a garlicky pesto with hazelnuts. I had some beautiful parmigiana from our last cheese box, so I used that to make a bright and fresh pesto.

I also made one of my favorite breakfast comfort foods this week – waffles. Real, buttermilk waffles. Bob loves these and Sunday morning, we decided that waffles were in order. I *may* have overfilled the waffle iron once, but it didn’t matter – it was what came out of the waffle iron that was important. Crispy outside, tangy, buttermilk waffles.

None of this was very fancy, and none of it was particularly exciting, but it worked this week. We are still getting use to not having Jessie around. I’m still watching where I step and looking for her when I come home. The cats have been a big help, although I do get a little teary-eyed when it comes to feeding them dinner. Mom compared it to the kids going to kindergarten or off to college – it just feels different and it takes time to adjust.

But in the meantime, I still have the cats, Bob, school, work, the house and a possible trip to keep me occupied. And, hopefully, some new and interesting foods to experiment with this summer.

 

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Jessie

Reluctantly Bob and I said good-bye to our Jessie girl.

Jessie was my baby from the first day I saw her. She was the only dog in the shelter who didn’t bark, and from the moment she sniffed, then licked, my hand I was totally in love. She came home with me the next day (the shelter wouldn’t let me take her until they did a home visit) and we had almost thirteen years together. Jessie was with me through two moves – one involving twenty hours in a car with crying cats, several jobs, going back to school and getting married. Bob may not have been the one to bring her home, but he loves her (almost) as much as I do.

In November the vet said her kidneys were failing and we only had a few months. In true Jessie fashion, she lived twice as long as expectated. She insisted on her daily walks until last week and while she was slow, she still wanted to say hi to everyone and search for rabbits. This week was tough; she was very sick and in the end, we knew it was time to say good-bye.

I recognize that she is a dog and dogs are not people, but she was my little girl and she depended on me. She greeted me every day and was always happy to see me. Jessie taught me what really accepting someone for who they are, not who you want them to be, means. She curled up with me when grandmom died (she was NOT a cuddle me puppy); she sat with me through Patches dying and greeted the kittens with such enthusiasm that they have aways been more her kittens than mine. I like to think she was happy and that she had a better life with me than she would have without.

Even though she was generally quiet (she could bark and she had some very healthy lungs) the house is quieter. Her presence is missed. It will be strange to come home and not have her greet me, to wake up and not check to see if she is where I step out of bed and to eat pizza without her drooling for the crusts and giving new meaning to the phrase, “puppy dog eyes.” She was family and she will be greatly missed.

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General Tso’s Tofu

One of the few things I REALLY miss about living in Jersey is the Chinese take out. Everywhere I lived in that state, even in the middle of no where growing up, there was decent to good Chinese take out. Florida? Not so much. We’ve tried a few places over the years, but for whatever reason, either the food isn’t good, the restaurant closes, or both, we just don’t have good Chinese take out here.  So whenever I want vegetarian comfort food, I go for Indian, but it’s not the same. There is nothing like a good General Tso’s.

I found a recipe on-line that looked interesting. Tofu instead of chicken? Check. Ingredients that I can actually get? Check. Reasonable cooking time and method? Check and check. So .. why not try it. And the best part – when making this at home, I can actually get rid of the broccoli and substitute snow peas! /squee!

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OK – how did this do? I bought the tofu already cubed, thinking this is one less step for me. I used about half the contained (16 oz. container, so 8 oz. tofu) but didn’t change the sauce portion. I like the sauce – its the best part!

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I marinated the tofu, which isn’t something I normally do. Tofu gets its flavor from the sauces, not from any marinade – or so I thought. This one may have proven me wrong. The tofu was just a touch spicy; not hot or burning, but enough that you knew there was some flavor there. The marinade also helped when I added the cornstarch to make the paste like coating. Full disclosure – at this stage, I honestly thought we would be ordering pizza for dinner. It looked gloopy and sticky and just awful, but it did match the description in the recipe, so I kept going. I am so glad I did.

That horrible sludge on the tofu in the marinade bag makes a perfectly crispy coating when fried. I mean beautiful. It crisps, turns golden in color and the tofu inside stays moist and silky. I was surprised. Really surprised.

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I stirred together the Thai Chili’s (thank you to the Asian market on the way home!!)  and the snow peas and scallions also thinking this isn’t going to work, but it did. I had fresh chili’s, and we didn’t eat them, but they did impart a nice heat (not too much) to the dish. Bob did get one bite on a snow pea, so I know they transferred the flavor and heat as expected. I added back in the tofu and tossed in the sauce. The sauce gelled really fast. It was still kind of a sauce, but it clung (which it should do) to everything. The problem for me was that there wasn’t any sauce not clinging to vegetables and tofu to pour on the rice.

But the flavors were pretty perfect. Both Bob and I were actually impressed with this dish. It tasted like *good* Chinese takeout and had a perfect consistency for the tofu. Best part – it was super simple to make and I now have everything on hand. (I still have leftover Thai chili’s, so I’m planning to dry them for future use.) Start to finish this was about 25 minutes. Perfect for a weeknight dinner or even a lazy day lunch. The only thing I’m changing is the cornstarch in the sauce – I’m definitely cutting that in half. While I think it was meant to cling to everything, I really wanted sauce on my rice.

Recipe:

I used the recipe from Minimalist Baker pretty much straight through. I reduced the tofu to about 8 ounces, and changed out broccoli for snow peas. For soy sauce, I used the regular soy sauce I have in the fridge – it might be tamari, but I’m not sure. When the recipe calls for something or maple syrup, I went with the maple since I have that on hand and don’t have the other sugars. I used toasted sesame oil and regular canola oil. I was out of ginger, so I used a tiny bit of dried ginger and it worked fine – maybe an eighth of a teaspoon. The next time I make this, and there will be a next time, I am cutting the cornstarch in the sauce to one teaspoon, but otherwise, doing it the same way.