It's Finally Time...

Time to start acting like I need to be organized again. I'm anticipating doing school-ish stuff all week, so I need to get my head wrapped around the idea of being planful with my food again. So, my first "transition back to school" menu...

Sunday

I did my long run today for my marathon training, and when I run long, the thing I crave the most after is protein. So Phil pulled some giant t-bones out of the freezer. Way more than I'll be able to eat, but I'm sure the leftovers will go to good use!

Grilled t-bone steaks with horseradish sauce

Grilled corn on the cob

Pan-sauteed zucchini (we are up to our EARS in zucchini right now -- the freezer's already full of diced and shredded -- ready for a winter of soup and bread -- and we still are eating it every day. Geesh.)

Delicious crispy whole grain bread

Monday

Craving seafood lately -- so we're going there a few times this week:

Clams with wine sauce: Saute some garlic, onion, and tomato. Add white wine and bring to an easy boil. Add clams, put lid on & turn heat down to a simmer, cook for 5 - 8 minutes until the clams open up. Pull them out and reduce the rest of the sauce a bit, then pour the sauce over the clams.

Crispy bread for dipping

And, let's face it, probably zucchini (or maybe green beans -- if we're feeling zesty)

Tuesday

Fajitas -- maybe with leftover t-bone, maybe with chicken breast, maybe with shrimp

Cook up some onion, garlic, red peppers, and zucchini. Add the protein and fajita spices (basically, anything orange in the spice cabinet -- chili powder, cayenne -- and I also add some cumin, and maybe some salt and pepper. Simmer it for a few minutes until sauce thickens.

Heat tortillas and put mixture in.

Top with yummy toppings: shredded cabbage, salsa, sour cream, chopped avocado, cheese

Wednesday

Horseradish crusted salmon (we're also up to our EARS in horseradish in our garden, so we're looking for ways to use it.)

Salad

Sauteed baby carrots

Maybe some zucchini :)

Thursday

Mini flatbread pizzas: Naan flatbread, pizza sauce, veggie toppings, some sliced chicken sausage, chopped fresh mozzarella. Cook on the grill with indirect heat (turn off the burners underneath -- use the other burners to heat and cook it, but that way it won't burn the bottom) until the cheese is a bit browned and delicious.

And just because I'm doing this -- it doesn't mean summer's over. I just wanted to put that in writing. It's NOT over yet. :)

Have a good week!

It's the Middle of August... Time to Start Planning Again?

Not quite. But as I'm getting all my "going back to school and having to be hyper-organized" ducks in a row, I'm feeling the tug of sitting down with a notepad and stack of cookbooks once again. Not so much as to do it for this week, but I'm thinking about it, and that's the first step.

It is squash blossom time, and I got a quart of them at the farmer's market on Saturday. A quart of squash blossoms is quite a lot, really -- over 30 -- but only comes in at 7 ounces.

So the recipes I found that call for either 4 squash blossoms or an entire pound? Didn't help me so much. But we used them for Sunday night dinner, and had squash blossoms two ways:

Way #1: Stuffed fried squash blossoms:

* Mix together some cheeses: I used some goat cheese, a bit of shredded Monterey Jack, and a touch of cream cheese to hold it all together. The goat cheese had some spicy seasoning -- maybe a bit of cayenne? -- so I didn't add any more seasoning.

* Washed out some blossoms, stuffed about a teaspoon of cheese mixture into each one.

* Made a really thin batter with a bit of flour, cornstarch, baking soda, an egg, and part of a beer, seasoned with salt and pepper.

* Dipped each blossom in, shook off extra batter, and pan fried on medium/medium-low-ish heat in some olive oil.

Way #2: Pasta

*Chopped and sauteed the rest of the squash blossoms, just to wilt them. They smelled fabulous. Removed from pan.

* Cooked a bit of bacon, some garlic (fresh from our garden -- first time ever!), and a few chopped green zebra tomatoes. Added a bit of white wine for some liquid.

* Added in some pappardelle noodles (already mostly cooked) and the squash blossoms, stirred it all together.

* A bit of grated parmesan on top.

It turned out fine, but we encountered a few bitter stem ends on the blossoms -- not something we noticed when making them in the past, but we just avoided that part of the stuffed blossoms when eating them.

The stuffed blossoms kind of look like chicken wings. But they're from zucchini plants, I promise!

Almost Chocolate Town

So, one of our favorite up-north places to eat and drink is Short's Brewery. We visited recently for the first time this summer, and were sad to find out that our favorite sandwich had been taken off the menu. We asked, and they said they just keep the menu offerings rotating on and off -- so we have hope it will be back!

But we were both really craving it, so we decided to try it for ourselves. It wasn't as fabulous as theirs, but we thought it was a good first effort. And we plan to keep trying -- changing ratios of ingredients, the way we layer them on the sandwich, etc.

So, their sandwich is called Chocolate Town, and it features blue cheese, bacon, and barbecue sauce. I know. It's just fa-a-a-bulous.

Here's our attempt:

We started with baguette, which we toasted a bit.

Then, on the bottom half, we sprinkled blue cheese.

Next came the bacon.

Then some black forest ham.

On the top half, we spread barbecue sauce, then more ham.

Toasted it all a bit, then added sliced tomato and lettuce.

Put it all together, served with coleslaw.

Not bad for a first attempt. I think we'll need to try this 20 or 30 more times, though, to get it just right...

Not planning. Not now, anyway.

So, in the summer, it's much harder for me to make long-term dinner plans, just because I don't really want to... If I have a bit more time and flexibility, I'm happy to go with the flow and decide each day what sounds good, or plan based on what's ripe in the garden.

But we're still making some good stuff, and I like to keep track of recipes that work.

So last night we had lovely gazpacho, along with grilled chicken and salad.

The gazpacho was easy and yummy:

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, diced

1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and diced

6 tomatoes, diced

1 sweet onion, diced

half a red onion, diced

handful of basil leaves, thin sliced

6 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

bit of salt and pepper

dash of sriracha

Mix it all up, put batches of it in the food processor, and blend until it's the consistency you like. I made mine still a little bit chunky. I left about a cup unblended, and just stirred the bigger pieces in with all the rest. Refrigerate.

This is some gazpacho with goat cheese on baguette.

June 12 - 16

Last week of school! Woo hoo!

It's Sunday night, I'm sitting in the sun on my deck smelling the gorgeous smell of dinner cooking on the grill. Trying to keep the squirrels and bunnies from tearing apart the garden so we can enjoy some of it ourselves, we've been out here a lot lately. Not sure if it's helping, but I'll always take an excuse to sit on the deck.

As it's the end of the school year, and my exhaustion level is impossible to predict, dinner this week is simple stuff. But I'm excited, nonetheless.

Sunday

We're breaking out the rotisserie for the grill for the first time this year, and are cooking a chicken (actually, we're cooking two -- I got one out of the freezer, and later, Phil got one out -- we both remembered we'd like to grill chicken this weekend, but didn't really communicate well other than that, and both were partially thawed before we realized. A silly misunderstanding, kind of like an episode of Three's Company, right?).

So I rubbed between the skin and the meat of one of the chickens. My flavoring was this: three big cloves of garlic, chopped, and an ice-cube of pesto (that's how I freeze the pesto when I make it) and salt and pepper and olive oil and white wine vinegar. Mix it all, moosh it all around under the skin.

Phil flavored his more barbecue-y -- tangy and sweet and a little spicy. But we're learning to go easy on the sugar with these things -- we once made a rotisserie chicken resembling a football, because the sugar in the rub kept flaming up and it turned the skin into a black crisp. But the inside was juicy...

And we'll roast potatoes and have some fresh Michigan asparagus with.

Monday

I got a whole bunch of peas at the farmer's market yesterday. Fresh peas are such a treat. We're having risotto.

Shiitake and sweet pea risotto

Salad (we'll be eating salad a lot lately -- strangely, none of the little critters are going for the lettuce in the garden, so there's plenty of that.)

Tuesday

Grilled pork chops

Asparagus

Grilled tomatoes and vidalia onion

Wednesday

Fried rice with stuff in it (if you're a frequent reader of this blog, you know the drill -- saute lots of veggies, one at a time, maybe some chicken, add pre-cooked brown rice, soy sauce, sriracha, then make a well in the middle and add some egg. Scramble it up and mix it in.)

Have a grand week!

June Food (June 4 - 9, specifically)

And now it's June... and stuff is starting to show up in the garden, which puts me SO in a food mood. Granted, the garden is coming in dribs and drabs, but just the joy of going out to pick a little bowl of lettuce for salad, or mint for a mojito, or strawberries for dessert is exciting in a way that isn't entirely appropriate.

So we've been using those little bits that have become ready, mixed in with lots of other good food. Our menu:

Saturday

Lamb burgers (1 pound ground lamb, chopped shallot, red onion, mint, parsley and salt and pepper) on whole wheat buns with a bit of feta on top

Salad (from our garden, yahoo) with mushrooms, lemon juice, and olive oil

Sweet potato chunks roasted in foil on the grill

Sunday

Grilled chicken breasts with pesto on top

Grilled asparagus

Grilled vidalia onion, cherry tomato, and mushrooms (done in foil) with a bit of parmesan on top at the end

Tuesday

A guy at the farmers market was selling lovely steaks on Saturday, so I had to buy some:

Grilled filet mignon

More grilled asparagus (I plan to eat it daily until it's not in season anymore)

Grilled mushrooms and onions

Wednesday

Fajitas: when cleaning out the freezer, we found some chuck roast that we had slow-cooked and shredded, saving it for a time when we'd need some quick cooking. Then we forgot about it. So we're putting it in fajitas tonight, and the rest of the plan is pretty slap-dash: onions and mushrooms, of course, and probably corn and red peppers from the freezer. Seasonings (cayenne, cumin, chili powder, jalapeno) and put it all in a tortilla. A bit of guacamole and salsa.

Thursday

Another freezer find: spaghetti squash! I cooked up a bunch last fall, shredded it so it looked like spaghetti noodles (so fun!) and froze it in single-serving bags. But at some point this winter, I lost total control of our freezer inventory. But control was regained this weekend, and I know what's in there again, so we're using stuff. So tonight is sauteed veggies with pesto and spaghetti squash. Maybe a bit of bacon for fun, or maybe just parmesan cheese. If it was a tough day, maybe both. And probably some fresh basil from the herb garden, eve though there's already pesto. Just because it's fun to pick things.

Have a grand week!

It's Been a Month...

I can't believe it's been over a month since I've posted on this. Which means it's been over a month since we've lived with a weekly dinner menu. Which means it's been over a month since we've been planful or careful or choosy about our dinners. Our lives have been a bit of a cooking desert in the last month, but I think we've crossed to the other side. I need for us to have crossed to the other side of that food desert, because I can't face many more evenings of scrounging around for something sort of edible or just ordering pizza.

We all have those months, right?

So I'm baby-stepping back into this. We got back from the holiday weekend at about 7:00 tonight, only to find that the Thai food we wanted to order was unavailable... they took Memorial day off? What?

So we ended up with chicken quesadillas (Phil's had Monterey Jack, and mine had goat cheese) with whole wheat tortillas. We also made a warm salad-type thing: sauteed red onion, red bell pepper, black beans and corn, seasoned with chili powder, cayenne, cumin, salt, pepper, and lime juice. Amazingly, we had one usable onion left in the house, and one chicken breast in the freezer, and bits of random cheeses, and chopped peppers and corn in the freezer. So it sort of worked.

With that under the belt, I'm ready to try a mini-plan for the rest of the week:

Tuesday

Pasta with morels, bacon, peas and goat cheese: We had LOTS of luck hunting morels up north this weekend, so plan to use our share like this:

1. Chop and saute bacon pieces. Remove from pan to drain, wipe bacon drippings from pan.

2. Cook pasta (linguine?).

3. Saute morels in olive oil, a bit of butter, and some chopped garlic.

4. After they're well-cooked, add the bacon and the pasta with a little bit of pasta water to make it all stick. Add a handful of peas and some goat cheese and swirl it all together.

Salad on the side.

Wednesday

Grilled pork chops

Grilled potatoes (dice some redskins, put in foil with some olive oil and onions, put on the top rack of the grill for about 30 minutes)

Might attempt a rhubarb sauce -- we have tons of it in the garden -- for the chops.

Salad

Thursday

Scallops with spinach and paprika syrup

Roasted sweet potatoes

If we can make it through this, we might be back on a dinner track that I'll be happy about. Wish us luck!