sarahmichelef | Entries tagged with interests:cooking

We walked in the door from the train station at 6 this evening and the folks from textile guild were expected around 7. I had some tilapia that I'd defrosted but hadn't decided what I was going to do with it.
( So I made a curry... )
Start to finish - 10 minutes. We had it with couscous and frozen carrots - the veggie choice could have been better, but it was what was handy.

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I have posted about my summery eggplant & zucchini pasta dish a couple of times before. Well, we had ONE MORE local zucchini that I bought last week so I made it ONE MORE TIME today, along with fresh steamed green beans. Nomnomnomnom.

I am SO SAD that our local peaches are gone. Done. No more. The ones in the store now cost the same, but they are not local, and they are not nearly as beautiful. Seriously, people, I have been eating peaches at the rate of like 1.5 a day for the last several weeks. I will miss my beautiful local peaches with their peachy fuzz and their yumminess.

Other things of note from the weekend will be forthcoming at some point, maybe. The world continues to be FREAKISHLY small in ways that I will elaborate on later (for sure, because it's pretty funny) and my kid is adorable, as always.

Also, my football boyfriend is on TV right now. Yay. Soon, however, I will have to go make lunches for all of us and pack bags and all that nonsense. But I did get TRex her very own high-tech water bottle today, which she's pretty thrilled about.

I lead an exciting life, eh?

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When we got home from the lake last night, there was a grocery bag with a GIANT zucchini hanging on our back door. I already had one in the fridge that I'd been intending to broil last week and didn't get around to it. So now I have two big green squashes to deal with.

This morning as I was planning the grocery list, TRex requested egg pie (crustless quiche) with zucchini and mushrooms so that will take care of some of that. I was already planning to do a variant on a recipe I've done a couple of times that involves pasta with lemon juice, squash, and basil. Then I got to the grocery store today and discovered that they also had very nice-looking eggplants on sale, and basil plants 2 for $4 (aka, one for about what I would have paid for the appropriate quantities of basil leaves).

And so, I present... Summertime Pasta. Stupid easy, extra-tasty, and even TRex gobbled it up. (Though, it must be said - my kid does NOT have average preschooler taste in food. She also specifically requested bulgur wheat for lunch.)
( recipe back here )

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I mentioned this over in

chargirlgenius' journal and there was interest in seeing the recipe, so here goes. This is modified from a recipe I got from the WW site years ago.

( recipe )

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We came home from DC with several quart-sized bags of herbs from Fran's garden. We had more sage than anything else, so yesterday I took some chicken breasts, covered them in sage leaves and whipped up a marinade of chicken stock, a bit of olive oil, and more sage leaves (chopped). Then I broiled the chicken (could have grilled but it was raining and I didn't feel like getting wet). Served it with bulgur & green beans (frozen) - the sage flavor was very subtle but it was there, and the chicken was VERY juicy. Definitely a winner.

Today for lunch I had some of the leftover bulgur with diced canadian bacon and onion, topped with some shredded cheddar. I was very skeptical, but it was pretty tasty! I'm still hungry; need to go upstairs and find some fruit to eat because that main course was a lot lower in the fruits/veggies department than I aim for.

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I hadn't made this curry in AGES. See, M doesn't like it much. But since I switched to WW Core, I've been making things that I like and he doesn't for my lunches. (Which means I'm eating a LOT of curry for lunch. Not complaining, not even a little bit.)

The basics go like this:
Take about a cup and a half of onion, a bunch of garlic, some fresh ginger, and desired quantities of cumin, coriander, and mustard and blend/process all that into a paste.*
Chop up one tomato into smallish pieces.
Saute the onion stuff in appropriate amounts of oil until it thickens up. Add the tomato, cook for about 5 minutes. Add 2 cans of drained & rinsed chickpeas, some tumeric, cinnamon, salt, and water** and cook for about 10 minutes.

I serve it over couscous, but it would be good with rice or any other grain, really.

*Our food processor needs a new blade and the blender doesn't do well with type of stuff. I blended until about half of it was a paste and left the rest rough-chopped. I think I like it better with some chunks of onion & garlic anyway.
**I had put some water in to facilitate the blender-chopping so I didn't add any in the cooking.

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From my student's vegetarian cookbook.
Marinate 2 oz tempeh in some white or cider vinegar (I used white wine vinegar), soy sauce, a little water, and a minced garlic clove. Saute in a bit of oil until tempeh is golden-brown (um, people, it was just marinated in soy sauce, and it's tempeh. It is already brown) and crispy. I ate it over left over brown rice with lots of salt & pepper with a pear to finish.
For the WW/health food crowd, it's core and probably not too many points. I'm not going and looking up the nutritional info for all of the ingredients right now - you can do it yourself if you want.

My latest food infatuation is the combo of spicy/peppery with a pear. Sooooo good. And I'm off of Bartlett pears - they go soft too quickly. I'm all about the Packhams and d'Anjous right now.

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Prepped this Sunday night, reheated tonight. Modified from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook -

to make it core. I don't have the NI off the top of my head. BHG claims it's a "one dish meal" but I disagree on the grounds that 1) well, the picture shows what a mess I made cooking it and 2) there aren't enough veggies in there for it to count as veggies for a meal. But it goes nicely with a salad.
( Read more... )

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Celebratory dinner this evening... I seasoned chicken breasts with chili powder & marinated them in pineapple juice overnight. Then I inaugurated the grill for the season, hooray! The taste was good, but there was a weird kind of mushiness on the outside. I don't know that I'll do them that way again. I served them with a big salad and mashed yams with just a teensy bit of brown sugar and some skim milk. And then we watched an episode of season 1 of the Muppet Show (with special guest Candice Bergen).

For the WW folks: 1 c of pinapple juice per 6 servings of chicken adds no measurable points to the plain chicken.

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I volunteered to bring a bulgur dish to the Purim party we went to on Friday so that I'd be guaranteed some core grains to eat. Initially I was going to do something with cranberries and walnuts, but then this morning Corey told me that her mom is bringing couscous with cranberries and pecans... So I assessed the fridge and came up with the following bulgur pilaf (serves... lots... probably 12 or so servings in here):

1 T olive oil
~2T fresh thyme
1/2 c diced onion
1/2 c diced red bell pepper
3 T chopped walnuts
2 C bulgur
3 C boiling H20

I sauteed all the "dry" ingredients for about a minute, then added the boiling water. Simmered it 'til all the liquid was absorbed. Supertasty warm, cold, and reheated. Yay!

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This had been sitting in my recipe book for ages and I kept not trying it - it's on the higher end of what I like to spend on points for a dinner dish (though it does include both the protein and starch so it's not SO bad) but it's core, so what the heck! The original recipe was for 4 servings; I upped it to 6 because we're at a point now that 4 servings will not feed three of us for two meals. It's quite spicy (I just ate a plate of it for lunch with the express intention of clearing my sinuses), very tasty, extremely easy, and reheats well. I'm writing it down as I made it; the process differs slightly from the original recipe.
( details in here )
When I first made it I wasn't sure I'd do it again, but after having it for lunch today I think I probably will. It's dead easy, which is a big bonus.

EDIT: Added an ingredient I'd forgotten (the lime juice)!

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