Lissa’s Recipe File: Herb-topped tomatoes

Good morning all! Yes, it’s MORE foodblogging.  Shut up!  I like food!

(I seriously do.  Food descriptions are some of my favorite passages in books.  The caviar-chicken scene in The Bell Jar, the food descriptions laced through James Herriot’s books — I love reading and re-reading them.  Comfort food without the calories!)

As I’ve said before, my mom is a fantastic cook.  She serves up way, way too much food when she has guests and then we eat all of it because it’s all delicious.  Goat-cheese-olive-and-anchovy-topped puff pastry, spinach-and-artichoke dip, jalopeño cheddar, brie, and more . . . . and this was BEFORE the turkey dinner!

I was leaning against the kitchen counter chatting with her as she prepared one of the simpler sides, the tomatoes pictured here:

Well, to be honest, hers were prettier than that — she minced up the onions way smaller than I did  (I’ll have to work on my mincing technique) and used less topping, so hers didn’t look oozy the way mine do.   Anyway, she minced red onion and curly parsley then marinated them in Zesty Italian dressing.

That’s all.  She mixed onion and parsley with dressing then spooned it onto tomato slices.  And holy COW was it good!!  It was pretty and colorful and tasted fresh and tangy and seemed WAY fancier than I’d have thought!

The other stuff on the plate is pan-fried mozzarella.  Adapting a recipe from my Pampered Chef cookbook — and you really should buy that book, it’s awesome — I sliced fresh mozzarella and dredged the slices in flour, egg and then a mixture of crushed almonds, Panko and Parmesan cheese.  I laid them in heated olive oil and cooked two minutes on each side.  It was delicious, but super-rich; the bright and tangy tomatoes were the perfect foil to the savory cheese.

Sadly — well, happily for my figure — I didn’t get apple pie for dessert, because I pawned that off on LilBro 1 to take back to college.  College-aged boys eat like NOBODY’S BUSINESS, y’all

Happy Hump Day!

A Yank attempts Southern gravy

Well, I’m sort of a Yank, anyway.  I was born in Texas and lived seven years in Maryland before moving to MA (and doing college in NC), but most of my cooking experience is Yankee-style.

So I needed the step-by-step details and pictures from FarmMom before I could attempt a real milk pan gravy:

Copying Roberta X, the first thing I did was fry up four slices of bacon. While that was cooking up, I microwaved two salt-and-peppered chicken breasts till they were just-cooked-through.  The bacon migrated to a paper-toweled-plate — it might have lost a slice in the process — and the chicken got a quick bacon-fat-sear on both sides, giving it a nice golden brown color and a smoky savory taste.

I popped the green beans in the microwave (tossed with a bit of butter and a half cup of sliced almonds) and got to work with the gravy.  Thanks to FarmMom, the consistency came out pretty good, but it was rather bland (since I hadn’t fried spicy chicken in it).  I fixed that with salt, pepper, seasoned salt, a bit of Montreal Steak Seasoning and some cayenne pepper — delish!

The green beans came out (next time I’ll cook them a minute less) and I crumbled the bacon across the top.  Voile!

Finished off with homemade apple pie!  And that was so good I licked the plate.  Seriously.

The only sad thing was that no one was here to share my lovely meal . . .

P.S.  No, just kidding. This was my first time for the pie, the gravy and that style of green beans.  Since Mike is out of town so often, I prefer to experiment on myself first.  That way, if anything sucks no one else has to eat it!

P.P.S.  I used whole Lactaid instead of whole milk.  My digestive system gratefully thanked me.

P.P.P.S.  There was a lot of gravy left.  How well does that reheat?  Anyone know?

Playing hostess!

Mike came in last night from Charlotte, and C from New York City, and LilBro 1 from New Hampshire, so I got to play hostess!  In my head, we all sat down to dinner at seven, so I planned accordingly.  Of course, that’s not remotely what happened.  C showed up around 8:15, Mike arrived around 9:30 and LilBro 1 came ten minutes after.  What, y’all don’t sit down to dinner at ten o’clock at night?

I had carrots and grape tomatoes with Light Parmesan Peppercorn Ranch Dressing and Light Caesar dressing for dipping as well as chips and fresh pico de gallo.  Then for dinner I served stuffed chicken breasts wrapped in proscuitto with steamed broccolini and steamed jasmine rice with lemon zest and fresh basil.  (If you were curious, puff pastry works as a substitute for the chicken and proscuitto — easy vegetarian option!)

No one was hungry enough for pie last night, so LilBro 1 and I had pumpkin pie with homemade whipped cream for breakfast.  And no, THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH PIE FOR BREAKFAST!

Got to shunt LilBro 1 off to his international flight — happy Early Thanksgiving, y’all, and have a good day!

P.S. I really do like having guests.  I’m not nearly as fond of the “getting ready for guests” chores.  But it’s nice having the laundry done, and the toilet scrubbed, and the counters cleaned, and the recycling taken out, and the fridge stocked, and the spare bed made with clean sheets, and the litter box cleaned, and . . .

The Domestication of Lissa progresses apace

Dinner last night:

Delicious, drool-worthy pulled pork sandwiches on Italian bread.  (We used a fancier brand of barbecue sauce than normal — Kansas City Style — and you could TASTE the difference.)

With steamed broccolini.*

For dessert:

Made-from-scratch pumpkin pie.**

With homemade whipped cream.

Holy COW I’ve come a long way from Velveeta Shells ‘n’ Cheese!

That is all.

 

*The real stuff, not that broccoli rabe shyte.

**No, I didn’t stew my own pumpkin, I used the canned kind.  I also didn’t grow my own cane sugar.  I still consider this made-from-scratch!

Odds ‘n’ Ends

On the way to the Shootout at the Jay G Corral:

LISSA:  (spotting cows) “Moooooooo!”

MIKE:  “Oh, are there doggies?”

LISSA:  (completely blank)  “Whaaaaaaa?” (Long pause.)  “Ohhhhhhhh.“

***

Sunday was one of those Patriot games I’m quite, quite sure was better seen on our TV than live-in-person.  After a while, though, it just got sad.  Why don’t they have a Mercy Rule in football?

***

Is there a MA law about buying more than one gun a month?  I vaguely remember such a law, but I don’t know if it’s applicable here.  Anyone want to save me the Google-fu?

***

Mike got inspired by the wretched weather this weekend and attached plastic insulation sheets over our screen doors.  The living room does seem warmer and less drafty!  Of course, I am smart enough to tell Mike that, regardless of whether it’s true.  My one big regret was that I didn’t have any beer in the fridge to hand him afterward.  So sorry darlin!

***

Tried a new recipe from my favorite cookbook (thanks Mom!)!  Lessons learned:

1) Stuffed chicken is YUMMY, but takes longer to prep than I thought it would

2) Broccoli rabe is DISGUSTING.  It is NOT the same as broccolini.  It tastes like stale, bitter broccoli with a dash of quinine and a touch of mold.

***

We did it.  We waited until the cat was sleepy and unsuspecting and then we shoved him into the Mickey Mouse costume.  Pix will be ready for Halloween!!  (Jen from Wisconsin — you should TOTALLY dress Elvis up like Elvis!!!!)

Happy Tuesday!  Don’t freeze!

NOT A NETI!!

Despite what you might think, this -

is not actually a torture device.

Seriously.

No, you buy it on purpose and voluntarily pour water up your nose.

If you’re insane.  Which apparently I am.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, the blue rubber instrument of pain up there is a neti pot, and you use it to pour water up one nostril and have it come out the other one.  No, you do not do this in lieu of saying the fifteen rosaries the Father assigned you for penance, or because you let the dog get into your wife’s shoe closet and he picked a pair of Christian Louboutin’s for his next chew toy.  You do this to wash ucky stuff out of your sinuses.

(Of course, the water you’re using to wash the ucky stuff out will, itself, be left behind as an ucky substance.  You feel quite waterlogged afterwards.)

I tend to get head colds a few times a year.  I can often fight off the worst of it by chugging tea-with-honey, gargling with salt water and religious use of Dayquil/Nyquil.  Often . . . but not always.  A few of my friends SWEAR by that-there neti contraption, so I gave it a try.

PANIC.  Utter panic the first time water started flowing up my nose TO DROWN MY BRAIN.  It didn’t even gross me out; I was too busy hyperventilating while sternly reminding myself that I was NOT in fact drowning.  It feels like water filling up your ears, mixed with that-time-you-got-pulled-under-by-the-riptide-at-the-beach-and-thought-you’d-drown.  It’s horrible.

I can’t say I noticed any great sinus improvement, either, but I’ll keep trying for a little while.  A week, maybe.

And if there’s no improvement, I’ll just move up to shoving bamboo splinters underneath my fingernails.

Dressing

My sister came over last night with a double-handful of dresses and about six pairs of shoes and a purse.  She has since decided that she should quit her job and become some celebrity’s personal shopper — the woman PWNS eBay, b*tches.

I tried on quite a few of them, but settled on the first one I grabbed:

It narrows perfectly at my waist and ends above my knee and I feel quite, quite fabulous while wearing it.  She also brought over a sparkly black-and-gold purse; strappy black high heels complete the look.  THANKS, Jenny!  I promise not to spill wine on it.  Well, I promise to try really really hard not to spill wine on it.

Of course, it was amazing that I could fit into any of the satiny confections after our dinner — chicken and pasta and Julienne’d onion and cucumber with  tzatziki dressing.  (Dressing.  Get it??  Good lord I need more coffee, I’m actually amused by the pun.  Oy.)  The dressing is made of Greek yogurt (fat-free!) and mayonnaise (light!), so it definitely carried the official Mike Does Not Like stamp.  You also throw in lemon juice, salt, pepper, and freshly pressed garlic — that part surprised me.  I’m not used to dealing with raw garlic; it smells and tastes all wrong.  Happily, when you mix it with all the other stuff it just tastes sort of tangy and zing!-y.

Thank god Jenny helped me eat it, ’cause I’ve got about four servings left in the fridge.  Who wants to come over and have dinner with me??

The problem with reading too much

All my life, I’ve been a bookworm.  My sister was two years older and always passed along any good books assigned in school, so I was always at least two years ahead in reading level.  I used to smack into lampposts and trip over things because I always had my nose stuck in a book.

I wasn’t always reading Shakespeare, mind you.  (In fact, I’ve read shamefully little Shakespeare, something I really will have to remedy some day.)  No, I got my start with Garfield comics.  My poor family — I can’t even begin to guess how many comics I “recited” to them, describing what happened in each panel complete with exact dialogue.

There are certainly a number of advantages to being a bookworm.  My grammar is acceptably decent, even though I never studied grammatical rules.  I can’t diagram a sentence to save my life and I’ve no idea what the present progressive is unless I translate the meaning from Spanish, yet I’ve corrected mistakes made by lawyers at Ye Olde Financial Company.

The best part of being a book-lover is that you’re rarely bored.  I don’t mind eating a meal by myself, in a restaurant or at home; a book is company enough.  I can tolerate long waits at the car shop if I’ve got my nose buried in a book.  I have a friend whose brother, while college touring, packed his X-BOX to hook up to the hotel TVs; what else was he going to do at night?

And now that I have a Kindle, I’m even more in love with reading.  It fits nicely onto the shelf of the elliptical machine at the gym so I can read during my morning workout; it gets whipped out when the line at the fish counter at Shaw’s is moving very slowly; it makes the glacial pace of the post office tolerable.

At any time, in any place, I can sit down and be happily absorbed in a book.

And that’s one of my problems.

There are some people who are frenetically busy and jittery, who clean constantly.  There are some people who just don’t feel comfortable if the area around them is untidy.  There are some people who clean when they get bored, who vacuum and dust as a means of alleviating ennui.

Why can’t I be one of those people?

Hell, I had a friend back in high school who, when given a bit too much of the party refreshments, would feel a desperate need to CLEAN.  (That was awesome for the rest of us, by the way.)

I read someone like Their Wicked Stepmother, who wakes and has coffee, a load of laundry and breakfast before I’m usually awake in the morning, and I’m in awe.  Lyn insists she’s not a neat freak; that “My general rule is: vacuum twice a week, mop once a week, bathrooms scrubbed once a week. Everything else as needed.”  (Crap.  When was the last time I vacuumed the bedroom?)  Meanwhile, I just want to curl up on the couch with my cat, my husband, a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and my Kindle.

Obviously, part of becoming a responsible adult is learning to balance what you want with what you need to do. Furthermore, I’ve no doubt that when human kittens (eventually) join our family, my leisurely book reading will become a thing of the past as I struggle with diaper rash (Milk of Magnesia works!), bodily fluid expulsions and the sixth sense that tells small children EXACTLY when you’re either eating or resting.  (I helped raise two younger brothers.  I pretty much know what we’re in for.)

I know a lot of my readers are bookworms as well.  Tell me, y’all — how do you balance your household chores with your desire to gobble down books?  Got any tips for me?  (I hope the answer is not books on tape.  I’ve only listened to a snippet of one, once, and I wanted to gouge out my eardrums.)

Almost ready for the bloggershoot tomorrow morning

Just one more batch to go!

The opposite of Fail – happily ever after!

Plus an official LookingForLissa product endorsement! We were seriously cynical about the THIRD pot-and-lid combo to be delivered — all three within seven days, mind you! — but they wrapped this one in a helluva lot of bubble paper and it got here just fine.  Hooray!

I swear I came *this close* to tap-dancing while singing Hosannas to the heavens.  Of course, Rajah doesn’t really approve of tap-dancing, so I refrained.  Also that tap-dancing around a very-obviously-breakable casserole dish didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

And now, your product endorsement!  So far we’re two-for-two with our new cookbook, 29 Minutes to Dinner (Volume 2) by the Pampered Chef.  (Mike:  “So are they pushing 29 because it’s *so much better* than those THIRTY minute meals?”  Yes, Mike.  Yes, they are.) Anyway, we’ve tried two recipes from the book and so far they’ve been amazing successes.  Here’s the first one we tried, Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Creamy Lemon Sauce: They’ve got some very smart techniques for saving time and labor, y’all.  Many of their recipes call for cooking the meat (especially chicken) in the microwave for the first half — gives you a head-start, you don’t have to stir it, you don’t lose moisture — before braising it, or pan-searing it, or whatever.  Then you take the juices from the microwave dish and mix it with lemon juice, lemon zest, spices and a can of Cream of Chicken soup (reduced fat works fine) to make the creamy sauce.  You dump the spinach in the colander and then drain the orzo over it — keeps the orzo from slipping out of the holes and wilts the spinach in one easy step.  AND, it looks pretty!

We tried the Braised Cabernet Chicken last night and it was excellent.  Again, as soon as you have the bacon frying, you pop the chicken in the microwave.  The sauce was surprisingly simple and you only had to use one pan, but it came out better than other (far more complicated!) chicken marsala recipes we’ve tried in the past.  (They’re silly for recommending potatoes on the side, though.  It went over egg noodles.  Duh.)

Now, I’m not saying that you can make these recipes in 29 minutes or less, as they claim.  I can’t do it with Rachel Ray recipes either.  (I will never chop and dice and slice things as quickly as a real chef does.  I also prefer to carefully transfer things from one pot or pan to another.  Thus, prepping and cooking takes me much longer.  On the upside, I still have all ten of my fingertips and an absence of massive burn scars on my forearms.)  Nevertheless,  each recipe definitely took less than an hour, which is quick enough for me.

Moo Shu Pork with Mock Mandarin Pancakes tomorrow!  Let’s hope to keep the streak alive!

P.S.  I also highly recommend the Calphalon 3-quart casserole dish.  If you can manage to get your paws on one that’s not broken.