Wednesday Pork Chops

This recipe is one of my go-to recipes when I have pork chops thawed. The original came from the Food section of the Washington Post many years ago. And whadya know, I found it online courtesy of the Post too: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2003/04/30/1144-pork-chops/. It really works, and it's really easy!

I didn't find the sauce recipe online (I looked, but I'm not going to claim I scoured the internet...). It was published in the Post the same day as the pork chop recipe. I've also made the Bourbon and Mustard sauce that's linked to the page the pork chop recipe is on - it's also very good, although I have a slight preference for the mustard-marsala one.

Mustard-Marsala-Cream Sauce:

1/4 cup marsala

1 Tbl coarse grained mustard

1/2 cup half and half (recipe calls for heavy cream - it's just as good with half and half)

When you remove the pork chops from the pan, add the marsala to deglaze it, upping the temperature of the burner to get it boiling and reduce it a little. Add the mustard, then the cream. Pour on top of pork chop. It's also ridiculously good on the veggies!

I didn't take a picture of dessert. I made "Magic Bars" - basic recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/magic-cookie-bars-from-eagle-brand/detail.aspx . This is a recipe that lends itself well to whatever goodies you have on hand. I used chopped macadamia nuts, chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, in addition to the coconut. I used fat-free sweetened condensed milk. We both liked it. A lot.

Nothing Fancy tonight

Today started out dreary and chilly, then after an afternoon rain squall, turned somewhat sunny, hot and humid. Perfect salad weather, and since I'd had a busy day it also needed to be a quick and easy meal.

Buffalo chicken salad is the best of both of those worlds - lots of flavor with little effort. I purchased a jar of wing sauce and poured it into a zip-lock bag. Then I cut up a couple chicken breasts into "tenders" and tossed those in the bag with the sauce, and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

The salad fixings might be made up of different things from time to time, depending on what I have on hand. Today it was romaine lettuce, Roma tomato, a little bit of a banana pepper, carrot and celery. And a pinch of crumbled blue cheese. Top it off with the chicken after sauteeing it in a pan (no added oil) and some blue cheese dressing and voila! Easy meal!

Dessert was another piece of the blackberry frozen yogurt pie I made yesterday.

Meatless Monday

We're going to give this "Meatless Mondays" idea a try. It should help our waistlines as well as out budget (although I'm not saying that fresh veggies are cheap, ya know?). If it helps the planet, so much the better.

Today I used a conglomeration of recipes I looked at. First, I roasted three sweet potatoes at 425 for about 55 minutes, until they were nice and mushy inside. To the mashed taters I added about a teaspoon of chipotle powder and about 1/4 cup mascarpone cheese. I didn't measure those - I added according to visual and tastebud approval. Added a little salt & pepper, and put 1 teaspoon filling in the middle of a wonton wrapper. Then I wet the edges of the wrapper and affixed another wrapper on top and sealed them. I used a fluted pastry wheel to trim the edges up pretty-like.

The sauce I got from this site: http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com/2009/10/sweet-potato-ravioli-and-spinach-in.html. I substituted half-and-half for the heavy cream.

It was OUTSTANDING!! I might add just a tad more chipotle to the ravioli the next time around. It was discernible, but pretty tame. I don't want overpowering, I just want a little better balance to the sweetness of the potato and cheese.

For dessert, I had made blackberry frozen yogurt from these directions: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/berry_frozen_yogurt.html. After churning it in the ice cream machine, I turned it out into a purchased chocolate graham cracker pie crust. It's very tasty, but the directions did not mention straining after processing the berries, and next time I would add that step as the seeds were very noticeable and they took something away from the enjoyment of the dessert (like "crunch" when chewing, for instance).

Thursday, on time this time

Playing catch up here...

In my introduction to myself and this blog, I mentioned that I take notes when I watch Iron Chef America. Tonight, I used those notes to make our main entree.

We record Iron Chef every week, and once in awhile, we'll sit down and watch a bunch of them. So, although it aired some time ago, it was just last week when Iron Chef Jose Garces was competing and the secret ingredient was blue cheese.

I actually took several notes from that show. It doesn't hurt that Chef Garces actually lives and cooks within striking distance to us (in Philly - we have reservations for a paired beer dinner at one of his restaurants in August but are unlikely to be able to attend due to a work conflict of John's... but we WILL eventually make it to one - or more - of them!).

One of the courses that intrigued me involved not only blue cheese, but chorizo, onion, garlic, and quail. I've never had quail. I've never seen quail for sale at any of the grocery stores I frequent. But I have chicken on hand, and I'm not afraid to use it.

I had two half-breasts, which I flattened as best as I could so I'd have some space to roll up the filling. The filling was about a half cup of sweet onion, diced, and two chorizo links, crumbled, and sauteed in a skillet with a dollop of olive oil. when those were mostly cooked through I added a large spoonful of the "secret ingredient" - some Danish blue cheese. Chef Garces had used Maytag blue cheese, but my store didn't have that - it had this Danish blue cheese and a plastic container labelled "blue cheese". Pathetic.

By the way, how, exactly, can you tell when blue cheese has gone bad??

Anyway, I took the filling and put a couple spoonfuls on each chicken portion and rolled it up, and secured with a couple of toothpicks. Each portion was huge enough to easily feed both of us, so this would have served four. I put both pieces in a small casserole dish which I'd sprayed with cooking spray, and baked it at 425 for about 25 minutes.

For a veggie, I julienned one yellow squash and one zucchini and stir-fried them in olive oil and dusted them with oregano.

For dessert, I got my inspiration from another Food Network persona - Sandra Lee. I have a couple of her cookbooks and although there was no recipe, there was a picture and short description of a pie-like dessert that sounded really easy.

I purchased a tube of crescent rolls, ready-to-bake, and unfurled that, placing one triangle in each of 8 ramekins. On top of that, I put a couple of spoonfuls of canned cherry pie filling. The 8 ramekins took exactly 2 cans of pie filling. I dusted them with some pink sugar crystals I bought a long time ago and don't remember why, but they're in my pantry so why not... and baked as recommended for the crescent rolls, at 425 for 12 minutes.

I don't know if the blue cheese in the chicken/chorizo enhanced it in any way. But I plan on trying this again down the road without it, since I am not constrained by any secret ingredients.

And we both liked the dessert, which is easy enough for anyone to make!

Day late again - does this means its leftovers?

Here's our Wednesday night meal. I looked at three or four recipes and borrowed from each of them for this chicken and mushroom enchilada.

I should probably preface this by mentioning that my interest in Mexican food is rather new-found. Where I grew up, in Vermont, we did not have anything resembling Mexican food. To this day, I do not think there is even a Taco Bell in town or in any of the surrounding towns (probably in Rutland or Brattleboro, both 40+ miles away, in different directions). Heck, my town didn't even have a McDonald's until I was almost out of High School!

Therefore, I hadn't even tasted Mexican food until I was away at college, and I didn't like it then. I still find I am not too fond of "Tex-Mex" - at least the kind where it's all about the spice and the heat. But since I've enjoyed Mexican food IN Mexico now, I'm getting rather fond of it. Not that I'm making authentic by anyone's imagination, but I need to start somewhere, and I'm not enough of a culinarian to attempt Rick Bayless' 20-ingredient mole just yet.

First I took the tortillas I was going to use and softened them by wrapping them in a damp paper towel, wrapping them in a tea towel and nuking them for a minute or two. Then I got the pan ready by putting down a couple spoonfuls of the picante sauce I was going to top the dish with. That way the enchiladas don't stick (as bad anyway).

I had roasted a chicken a couple days before and raided the carcass for about 2 cups of meat to dice up. I also thinly sliced a package of baby bella mushrooms and one red pepper that was in the bin marked "jalapeno" at the grocery store. I had to come online to a chile identification table to make sure that's actually what I had, as most of the jalapenos I've seen are green.

The pepper and mushrooms went into a skillet with some olive oil cooking spray and I cooked those down until the mushrooms were soft. I spread a small spoonful of "lite" sour cream on the tortilla, then laid down a handful of chopped up chicken (both white and dark meat) and a spoonful of the mushroom/pepper mixture. Then I added about a tablespoon of a "Mexican" cheese blend and rolled up the tortilla and placed it in the pan. I did this six times, which used up all the ingredients I had prepared.

When all six bundles were lined up in the pan, I poured the rest of the jar of picante sauce over them and added a few more handfuls of the Mexican cheese blend to cover it. Then I baked it at 350 until it was warm and bubbly, which took about 30 minutes.

BTW, the leftover enchilada I had for lunch today was possibly even yummier than it was last night!!

Tuesday, better late than never

Give me a couple of days off from blogging, and it's like I never started! Out of sight, out of mind, I guess!

Anyway, Tuesday's dinner was not late, just this re-telling of it. We've had quite dreary weather, and Tuesday (and Monday before it and Wednesday after it) were without sunshine and much more like March than May. Probably as a result, I've been feeling a little less than inspired and/or motivated. When I get in moods like that, it's comfort food I want to eat.

John cannot eat beef. Well, he can, but at great expense - it causes his gout to flare up painfully. Being as how he's awfully nice to me, I choose not to put him into pain. We don't often eat red meat at all, even though some of it does not affect his gout. The last time we had any red meat, it was a leg of lamb at Easter. His gout is also why we'll never go completely vegetarian. He cannot eat beans either. He shouldn't drink beer... but he's not willing to sacrifice a good microbrew or two. There are limits to what a man (or woman) is willing to do.

Thankfully bison is genetically different enough from beef that it doesn't cause him pain. It's also much leaner! About the only thing bad about boof is that it costs considerably more than beef.

I call beef "boof". Because it sounds funny. And because many people call bison "buffalo", which it is not. From the Italian cheese mozzarella di bufala (which is actually water buffalo, but it's the pronunciation of boof-ah-lah I'm getting at). It has nothing to do with the Red Sox signing a pitcher named Boof Bonser in the off-season. Although I did get quite the chuckle out of that one.

So Tuesday I had some thawed ground bison... thawed ground boof... available to use and boofburgers sounded easy and good. I made us each a 1/4 lb patty and put it on the griddle pan. When they were done, I added a few crumbles of blue cheese to the top. We had a salad to go with it.

For dessert, I made a cake. Yellow, with chocolate frosting. Betty Crocker, mind you, not from scratch. My grocery store had a great sale.

Roasty Goodness

Today was a good day to fire up the oven and make some roasted stuff for dinner. Stuff. Commonly known as roast chicken, roasted potatoes, roasted asparagus. Pretty simple but tasty stuff.

For reasons unknown, my photograph didn't make it to my email, and my phone is currently offline, out of gas. But I'm reasonably confident you all know what a roasted chicken, et al looks like.

No fancy recipe. My "trick" to roast chicken to keep it moist is to spray it with butter-flavored cooking spray. Then just simple salt and pepper.

I threw a couple handfuls of red fingerling potatoes into the roasting pan when there was about 50 minutes of roasting time left. Then with about 35 minutes left, I put in a pan in which I'd put asparagus, olive oil, salt, pepper and just a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. They all finished at the same time.

For dessert, earlier in the day I'd sliced strawberries and let them soak all day in a couple spoonfuls of sugar and a glug (scientific term right?) of chambord. Bisquick can take the credit for the shortcakes.

Sometimes simple is so nice and tasty.

The vote is in

It was close, but tonight's winner is Eggplant Parmesan. Ok, I didn't really count the votes - I ended up with a compelling (to me anyway) reason why Szechuan eggplant wouldn't be the ideal entree today. I'm making salmon tomorrow, and the recipe I found for that would have too many similar Asian tastes to the Szechuan eggplant recipe.

Tonight's dish is one I've made before, and it was good enough to make it into "Becky's Book of Yum" - the photo album where I compile all my favored recipes. Here it is: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/eggplant-parmesan-ii/detail.aspx

Now you can make it yummy too! I added a simple salad to go along with it. I was thinking of doing some garlic bread but planned on having leftover bread pudding for dessert and thought it a bit redundant.

Trial and Error

Did some trial and error with the entree and dessert for tonight's dinner.

The barbecue sauce on the chicken thighs was the success part. Well, yeah, so was the corn, but how hard is it to open a can, empty it into a sauce pan and heat it?

The sauce came from a recipe called bakingbites.com, but the last time I tried to navigate to that site my anti-virus software told me it had fended off an attempted attack on my computer, so I won't publish the link.

Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup ketchup

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup honey

1 1/2 tablespoons chipotle peppers in adobo sauce

2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp salt, or to taste

pinch ground pepper, or to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and blend until very smooth.

I put 4 chicken thighs in a casserole pan I'd sprayed with olive oil spray and poured the bbq sauce over them. Put that in the oven for an hour at 350, and they came out perfectly!

As for the side, it was my executive (chef) decision to have corn... it was what I was in the mood to have!

I attempted a duo of desserts, and this is the "error" part of the trial and error title. I'm not too happy about the way either of them turned out.

Since I've now found a couple sources for the tamarind concentrate (haven't found paste, but figured out how to use the concentrate) I decided to use some of it to make a granita. I thought about a sorbet, but really wanted it light in texture too. Granita sounded right.

I mixed a cup and a third of the concentrate with a quart of water, and added about a half cup of sugar. Froze that, forgetting to stir it every hour to keep it from getting solid. So it was real solid when I went to use it after eating the main course. I "shredded" it with a fork, and scooped up the loose ice crystals.

It was refreshing, but I'm not certain how much a person who's not used to the flavor could eat of it. It's definitely an acquired taste.

The other dessert was to make a vanilla-coconut frozen yogurt. I had just the right amount (3 cups) of vanilla lowfat Greek-style yogurt. I added 3/4 cup of Splenda, 1 tsp vanilla flavoring (if I'd had coconut extract, I'd have used that) and 1/2 cup of toasted coconut to the yogurt and chilled it, then churned it in my ice cream machine.

The consistency is good. The coconut is musted, and I think the Splenda is leaving an aftertaste I don't care for. At least it is definitely soothing (as was the tamarind granita) after that palate-firing barbecue sauce!

Warm is a Must

It's May 11th. Why doesn't the weather reflect that? I'm baking today, mostly so I had a reason to turn on the oven and warm up the kitchen. Warm things are most necessary tonight for supper.

I had made a roasted veggie frittata not long before starting this blog, but since it was prior to its inception, no recipe or description had made it here. That's being corrected tonight.

I had thought about making an eggplant parmesan lasagna for supper, but have NO room in my fridge for leftovers. So, in the spirit of getting rid of some veggies at least, tonight's meal was born.

I roasted a bunch of veggies I have on hand - a small quartered sweet onion, a zucchini and a yellow summer squash, an orange bell pepper and a handful of garlic cloves, on a baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed. They roasted at 425 for about 25 minutes. When I brought them out, the pepper went into a zip lock baggie to make it easier to peel. When everything had cooled down I chopped it up to bite-size and set them aside.

The egg portion was to be 8 eggs, but I used up the Eggbeaters I had thawed, and they amounted to six eggs, and I used 2 "real" eggs for the remainder. I whisked those together, put in the veggies to stir it up and put it into a greased (well, sprayed) cake pan. at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. At the end of that time, I let it sit out for 5 minutes to set up.

Dessert came about from my attempts to make whole grain French baguettes. The baguettes themselves came out ok, I think they could be better. But I had more than enough of them to use up one baton in bread pudding.

I cut up the bread into bite-sized pieces, about 5 cups of it all told. In a seperate bowl I whisked 2 eggs and 2 cups milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract and grated some fresh nutmeg on top. Poured the egg & milk mixture over the bread and let it soak for about an hour. Just before baking, I stirred in about a cup of caramel chips I picked up at a party/cake decorating store.

That baked for 45 minutes at 350. I had done that before supper went in, so when the frittata exited the oven and made its way towards our dinner plates, I shut off the oven and put the dessert back in to warm up. When it came out, I topped it with a spoonful of the Honduran cream I've spoken of in earlier blog postings.

Delicious!!

Thai Curry Shrimp

If any of my readers watch Top Chef, you may remember an episode, I think a couple years back in the year that Stephanie Izard won, in which a chef served a shrimp that was mealy-textured. Tom Colicchio asked if they cooked badly or shopped badly, and the chef's answer was that they shopped badly, meaning that no matter what they did in the kitchen, the shrimp was destined to end up sub-par on the plate.

I shopped badly also, and the shrimp I brought home (frozen, in a bag) were also mealy. I noticed it as soon as I started shelling them. But I didn't think it was such a bad problem as to discard them and re-plan the entire meal, and it was not. It didn't turn out badly, but it could have been better.

Aside from the mealy shrimp, my fiddling with the recipe could have led to some of its less-than-superbness. I got the recipe from Epicurious: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Thai-Shrimp-Curry-109161. I didn't realize until I was into it already that I had no Thai Green Curry Paste. The one I had was Red. So I used the red (about a tablespoon and a half of it, emptying the small jar) and added green to my grocery list. I liked the broth. In addition to the poor texture on the shrimp, I wondered if the addition I made of some shredded Napa cabbage (to up its vegetable quotient) might have led to some bitterness. I did like the crunch the cabbage added however. I also added about a half cup of julienned yellow bell pepper.

For dessert, we had a few crunchy oatmeal-cinnamon chip cookies I made yesterday.

Cleaning out the fridge time

Every cook has done it from time to time. That is, looked in the fridge and pantry and decided they needed to figure out a way to use up the odds and ends that were hanging on from previous meals. For instance, I recently tried my hand at potato gnocchi (messy! but I will try it again) and had two russet potatoes hanging out in the recesses of my pantry. I also had a package of shiitake mushrooms in the fridge and one bunch of broccoli. As previously noted, I'm trying - so far successfully - at cutting back on meat so a vegetarian meal looked appealing (I'd made spaghetti and turkey sausage meatballs for lunch).

So I dove into Epicurious and other websites and looked around. The best looking recipe was a scalloped potato and mushroom dish. I decided a simple steamed broccoli side was in order. More on that in a bit.

I found this recipe through Google at Cooks.com: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1622,132182-244192,00.html. I dug into my soup bin and found but one cream of mushroom soup can. However, I had a cream of potato soup on hand, and what was in the dish with the mushrooms? So I figured that'd blend in better than cream of chicken or cream of celery, etc. That was the only change I made to the dish.

It was creamy, but I would like the potatoes to have cooked a bit more. The hour I gave it wasn't enough. I sliced them quite thin too, so I doubt I could get them much thinner. Maybe I should have gotten out my mandoline and used it. Or maybe just an extra 15 minutes would have made the difference. I liked it better than John, but that's unsurprising since I like potatoes in general much more than he does.

I decided the steamed broccoli side needed some zing to it. I'd read a recipe in one of Ellie Krieger's cookbooks about steamed green beans with a mustard sauce. So I put a couple tablespoons of stone-ground mustard into a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup and gave it a whisk to loosen it up. It definitely needed something to thin it out. So I searched my brain and my fridge... water? Boring. Chicken broth? That would take away from the vegetarianism of the meal. Bourbon? (I have a lovely recipe for a bourbon and mustard sauce to go with pork chops - and it's great on the veggies too - look for that recipe to appear on these pages). I thought the liquor would be too strongly flavored, but it was heading in the right direction.

So I turned to a mostly- used bottle of white wine, a chardonnay, in my fridge. I added a teaspoon or two to that - basically just splashed a little in and stirred it together until the mixture was still thick enough to cling to the broccoli but liquid enough to pour from the cup. It definitely had some zest to it! We both liked it!

For dessert, we had a couple of the cookies I made this afternoon - oatmeal-cinnamon chip whole wheat cookies. Recipe here: http://adashofsass.com/2009/02/10/whole-wheat-oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies/ . They're a little drier than I prefer. I'm glad I did not add the walnuts as they likely would have made them taste even drier.

Lazy Saturday night

We went out for lunch, to a brewpub about an hour from our house. I had a burger, John had a pizza. And we each had two beers and shared a bread pudding dessert. It was all delicious! But I knew supper had to be on the lighter side to make up for these indulgences.

I saw on their menu a salad that appealed to me - a chicken salad with balsamic vinaigrette, bacon, egg, cheese, tomato, cuke and roasted bell pepper. I thought to myself that I have all those ingredients at home, so why not make that for tonight?

I cooked up 3 slices of bacon and hard-boiled 2 eggs (only used one of them) about an hour before suppertime. About 30 minutes later I cooked a single chicken breast; which I'd cut in half to make thinner, in a teaspoon of canola oil. When that had cooled, I sliced it up to put in the salad. Tear up some romaine leaves, cut the tomato, cuke, pepper, crumble the bacon - this couldn't be easier! And we both liked it!!

Dessert is something I bought around Easter time as a special treat at the wholesale club we belong to. It was a package of 60 pastry treats like vanilla napoleon and truffles, frozen, and cost $9.99. They're really good, and I had forgotten they were in the freezer, behind all my ice cream fixings. We're waiting for them to thaw now before we dig into them!

What's not to like?

Sometimes I take some flack for having extra time to produce pseudo-gourmet meals. Tonight, anyone can do it. It's my favorite go-to 20 minute meal - and the tastiest chicken marsala I've ever had (yes, even better than most restaurants)!

I found it in an old Weight Watchers "Make it in Minutes" cookbook. I also found it online here: http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Weight-Watchers-Chicken-Marsala-294720. Follow it exactly and you will have a very nice entree.

If I'm in a hurry, my favorite quickie vegetable to go with this is spinach. Buy a bag of baby spinach at the grocery store. Poke a few holes in the bag with a fork and nuke it for 2-3 minutes. Ta da. Some of them say to not nuke the bag of spinach. I do it anyway.

Tonight I made a side dish of broccoli with a soy-lemon-garlic dressing. I originally got it in the Washington Post many years ago. I found a copy of it here online: http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/RCP00259/broccoli-cauliflower-soy-lemon.html

It's a nice quick veggie dish, very easy and tasty, although not as fast to put together as the spinach.

I was out and about a lot today so didn't make up a new dessert. We still have a little mango sorbet and ricotta-lavender-honey ice cream so we'll choose what to have from those two things.

(btw, I felt under the weather all day Thursday due to only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep all night, so we got pizza carryout... yes we do that too from time to time).

Feliz Cinco de Mayo, part Dos

The bulk of the cooking of yesterday dinner's main course didn't take place yesterday, it took place the day before. None of the stores in my area, despite one of them having two huge aisles filled with "International" food - most of it Latino flavored - carry achiote paste. All of them, even the podunk one, carry annato seed or ground annato. Annato is the main color and flavor behind achiote paste.

I started with this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Traditional-Achiote-Recado-15385 . I didn't soak the annato seeds in water since I was starting with an already-ground spice. I did toast it, and the other spices. In the process of making this, I completely used up my ancho chile powder. It was worth it!

Once I made this sauce (it was really a marinade, not a paste) I put it into a zip-lock baggie where I had about a 3 1/2 lb pork butt roast waiting. It went into the fridge on Tuesday to wait for Wednesday morning.

Come the morning of Cinco de Mayo, I got the crock pot out and put the meat and marinade into it before I even had coffee. I gave it 12 hours. It did not need that much time. I went to turn over the roast at about the 8 hour mark and it fell apart on the end of my fork.

After having the previously-mentioned appetizers (a margarita and chips and some lovely salsa), I put on some yellow rice and made a salad. I was planning on making a dessert yesterday, but just didn't have room for it in the fridge until the pan of tres leches cake was gone. Now that's gone so I can play with desserts some.

Later today, one of my very favorite simple but yummy recipes that takes less than 30 minutes to make!

Feliz 5/5

This is just the warm-up...

The salsa is quite interesting. A bit hotter than I usual eat, but well within my tolerance level (which, incidentally, has increased somewhat in the past few years). I bought 4 good-sized tomatillos yesterday. Had never boughten one previously. Not sure I'd ever even held one before! But at least I've eaten them, in salsas. I washed them up and put them on the broiler pan along with two jalapenos and 3 garlic cloves. Broiled them for about 6 minutes and let them cool. The skin peeled right off the jalapenos easily.

I put those ingredients into the food processor along with a chopped up sweet onion and a large handful of dried cilantro (it called for a cup of fresh - I don't often have fresh herbs on hand as they go bad so quickly). Added a couple pinches of salt and blended. Then I tasted it. And I remembered the trip we took to Playa del Carmen last December and the terrific pumpkin seed salsas I had there.

I looked up pumpkin seed salsas, and the recipes I found called for tomatillos. Garlic. Chiles. So I said "why not" (heh - yes I do sail on Royal Caribbean) and toasted about a cup of those and threw them into the food processor too.

Yummy.

The margaritas are each:
3 parts tequila (Don Eduardo silver this time around)
2 parts sour mix
1 part Cointreau
1 part Rose's lime juice

Shaken, not stirred.

The tortilla chips are store-bought whole-wheat tortillas (forgive me, I don't own a tortilla press. Yet.) which are cut with a pizza cutter, put on a cookie sheet, sprayed with butter no-stick spray and sprinkled with salt and baked at 400 for about 8 minutes.

The typos and verbose-ness are courtesy of the tequila. Gracias.

Fresh Pasta = good

I made pasta yesterday, of the spinach and ricotta variety. The recipe was one I found in a cookbook I have entitled "Truly Madly Pasta". I haven't found the exact recipe online, but the four or five I looked at are all reasonably similar. I took a bag and a half (10 oz bag) of baby spinach and washed them, and put them in a pot with just the water still clinging to them from the washing. Put on the lid, turned up the burner to medium for 5-8 minutes, and the spinach was cooked. Then I let that drain for an hour in a colander and tried squeezing it between two matched plates to get excess water out. I don't know how successful that was. Maybe next time I'll just use my hands so I can feel if it's still too wet.

Then I chopped up the spinach and threw in a couple good-sized spoonfuls of ricotta, some kosher salt and grated some nutmeg on it. I got my nutmeg this past winter in Grenada - gotta love getting it right at the source!

Then I made the pasta. I use the recipe for egg pasta in my Stand Mixer Bible cookbook. It's just 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, 4 eggs and a tsp salt. After letting that sit for half an hour I rolled out small sections of it. I rolled it to 6 this time instead of 5 so it was a little more delicate.

I let the rolled-out sheets dry just a little on the counter before filling them. I dropped small spoonfuls into the middle of each long sheet, wet the edges and the middle of the sheet and folded it in half, also pressing together in between the mounds of filling. I then made the mistake of taking them off the counter to clean it and putting all the pasta into the colander to await cooking. They were a bit wet and many of them stuck together. I won't make that mistake again.

I made a tossed salad while the water for the pasta heated up. Fresh pasta doesn't need to be boiled long - I think it was in there maybe 3-4 minutes tops. One of the raviolis exploded in the water. Actually I was surprised it was only one of them.

The sauce I used needs a bit more work I think. I toasted some pine nuts then removed them from the pan. Added half a stick of butter and melted that til it was nutty brown and added some sage. I would have liked to use fresh sage but I had none in the house.

It turned out pretty good, although I had hopes for better. For dessert we finished up the hazelnut ice cream I made last week.

Today is Cinco de Mayo, and I have cochinita pibil in the crock pot.

Feeling Krabby

No, no. I'm fine. I just wanted to use up some surimi last night. You know, the fish that's made to look (and taste, in theory) like crab. So some spell it krab to let you know they got the cheap stuff.

I got the recipe off Louis Kemp's website - http://www.louiskemp.com/recipes/seafood_enchiladas.php

I only used one package of krab since there are two of us and we are trying to cut back on meat portions. And I used the "Mexican cheese blend" instead of cheddar. It was okay, but I thought it was on the bland side. If I make it again, I will add some spice to it - paprika maybe, or crushed red pepper, or the jalapenos mentioned as a garnish.

A throw-together meal

But it tastes good. Back to cooking today after a couple nice nights off.

For lunch I roasted some veggies - a small eggplant, 8 baby bella mushrooms, half a red onion, a red pepper and some spinach - and made quesadillas. The spinach was a little dry. I'm not sure I'd do it that way again. And I forgot to put in a couple garlic cloves. And I forgot to take a picture of it.

Tonight's meal, it was time to use up some remnants. I had 10 shrimp, a small bunch of broccoli, and homemade pasta I'd put into the freezer when I didn't use it the day I made the batch. I cheated and used Knorr's Parma Rosa sauce, and sliced a clove of garlic and sauteed it along with the shrimp in olive oil.

The meal came together in about 20 minutes. One note to pass along - some of the pasta was clumped together like snarled hair. I guess I need to make sure it's a little drier next time before I put it in a zip-lock bag and stow it in the freezer.

This should be a fun week ahead!