Thursday evening was DH’s grad school orientation, and I had an adventure that involved walking almost two miles in flip flops in the rain, so dinner consisted of whatever we could both scavenge from the fridge.

Friday evening, we made the trek to my hometown, where we expected to need to spend some time cleaning up my parents house after a storm – They’re on a road trip, and the house got hit by quite the hail storm on Wednesday. Luckily, there wasn’t any damage other than a few dings to their motorcycles. (Yeah, my parents are cool like that…) We wound up having calzones in good company, with the Gs and Mrs. G’s grandparents, the Ls. They’ve all been friends of mine for a pretty long time, but I don’t see them nearly enough. It made for an excellent night filled with lots of laughs – Thanks, guys!

Saturday we had a late dinner with the Gs before they left to go home to CA – I threw together some pretty tasty chicken and black bean burritos and DH made refried bean dip. Yummy. Last night we had spur of the moment Chinese food with another friend, K. I could very nearly live on crab puffs, I love them THAT much.

We started our dinner with the shrimp & papaya summer rolls: nicely plated Thai basil and other herbs wrapped in a wonton wrapper, topped with green papaya and a small shrimp. Neither DH or I was overly impressed by the rolls themselves; the basil was overpowering and the taste of the green papaya and shrimp got lost. They came served with a sweet chili sauce, which was quite tasty. Our dinner companions, the Gs, started with the spring rolls, which they said were really good. Those, too, were well plated, and came with the same sweet chili sauce.

For our entrees, DH and I both ordered the dishes that were our favorites at the old Vila Thai location: DH got the red curry, and I ordered Rama chicken. Mr. G ordered the Rama chicken as well, and Mrs. G selected cashew chicken.

The plating on both of the Rama chickens left a lot to be desired. It came out with a smallish breast of chicken settled nicely on a bed of sauteed spinach with a rather weird looking glop of brown peanut sauce over the top and a mound of brown rice on the side. My plate also had some sort of grayish liquid around the spinach, which I have to think was some sort of remnant of the grill, but it probably should’ve been wiped before reaching the table. Mr. G commented that the peanut sauce resembled peanut butter both in appearance and texture, and I’m inclined to agree with him. I hate to keep comparing new to old, but at the old Vila Thai location, the dish was much more smoothly combined, with the chicken cut down and the sauce mixed in.

DH’s red curry had a much better looking plate; he had a nice sized chicken breast surrounded by the curry sauce and vegetables, with the same rice mound. He said it was good, but not quite as good as it used to be. I’m pretty sure Mrs. G’s plate was the best presented of the four we received – she said the food was excellent and it looked nice as well.

Our service was decent, though somewhat slow in bringing refills and the check. The owner was around, and stopped by our table a few times to see how we were doing. I chatted with her briefly about the change in location – she’s very approachable, and she really seems interested in talking with her guests.

Overall, I don’t think it’s quite my favorite place for Thai food anymore, but we’ll probably go back at least once; I’mintrigued by their advertised wine tastings and live music on the patio during the weekend. I’ll probably always miss the old Vila Thai location and being able to walk over from the University for an order of Rama chicken at lunch.

(Credit for all pictures in this post goes to TucsonThai.com)

My kitchen, like my life, has changed massively since I last posted. Over the past six weeks, DH and I have:

- Found out we were moving, again.

- Found out that our move was on short notice, again.

- Moved. (At least this time it was an upgrade!)

- Gone on separate vacations to visit various family members

- Returned to work, only to receive the dreaded layoff notice

- Fought off a nasty head cold

- Dealt with new medications for asthma and a weird imbalance that makes me respond poorly to stress-related adrenaline, and the havoc those medications wreak on my body

- Interviewed for two positions, and accepted an offer from one of them

- Started running again

- Started the new job

- Gotten set up for DH to start grad school (next week!)

- Realized that I can’t take classes this semester with the new job

Through all of the chaos, I’ve somehow managed to keep my head up and keep cooking. Food has sort of been my constant – No matter how much life throws my way, I can always cook something fantastic and make myself (and DH!) happy. I’ve fed my family, friends, and through some pretty darn good pictures (if I do say so myself…), I’ve fed my Facebook friends list.

Food from the past few months:

In order, left to right: Fruit pizza with cream cheese frosting, prosciutto and poached egg bruschettas, spinach and feta stuffed peppers, goat cheese and walnut stuffed figs with honey balsamic glaze, tilapia with mango salsa, BBQ mustard pork tenderloin with warm bacon slaw, potato leek soup with smoked cheddar, and last but not least, the sweet corn risotto that I made for dinner this evening. (Click the images to see them larger)

I’ll leave you with the sweet corn risotto recipe, which I borrowed from Restaurant Widow, with two tiny changes: more wine and cayenne pepper instead of pepper flakes. I picked this recipe for a totally nerdy reason: she mentions Harry Potter, and, IMHO, anyone that loves Harry is good stuff.

Good night

I found this recipe at Tiny Morsels yesterday while hunting for something nice and healthy for dinner. I’d heard a Trader Joe’s commercial about quinoa that sparked my curiosity, and Sprouts had it AND wild-caught salmon on sale this week.

I’d never cooked with quinoa before; heck, I’d hardly even HEARD of the stuff before the TJ’s radio ad. A little background:

Although not a common item in most kitchens today, quinoa is an amino acid-rich (protein) seed that has a fluffy, creamy, slightly crunchy texture and a somewhat nutty flavor when cooked. Quinoa is available in your local health food stores throughout the year.

Most commonly considered a grain, quinoa is actually a relative of leafy green vegetables like spinach and Swiss chard. It is a recently rediscovered ancient “grain” once considered “the gold of the Incas.” Click here for more information.

This stuff is awesome!

Moving on to the recipe – Here it is as posted by Tree on Tiny Morsels, which, btw, is one of my new favorite blogs – I’ve bookmarked a few of her other recipes and intend to bring them to life very soon.

1/2 cup quinoa

1 cup water

3 teaspoons canola oil

3 big handfuls of fresh baby spinach

1 clove garlic, minced

1 tablespoon coarsely chopped cilantro

1 sockeye salmon fillet (6-8 ounces)

kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.

Combine the quinoa and the water in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10-12 minutes, or until done.

Put 2 teaspoons of the canola oil and the chopped cilantro in a shallow dish. Put the dish in the oven for 5 minutes. While the dish is in the oven, rinse and dry your salmon fillet. Remove any obvious bones, and sprinkle it with a pinch of kosher salt. When the oil and

cilantro are sizzling hot, place the salmon fillet skin side up in the pan, and let it cook for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, take it out of the oven and peel the skin off with a pair of tongs. It should peel off easily, if it does not, put it back in the oven for 2 minutes, and try again.

Once you’ve peeled the skin off, sprinkle it again with a pinch of kosher salt, and the ground ginger, then flip it over. Bake for 4-5 more minutes, or until its done. (I know you already know this, but, the fish will flake easily with a fork when its done.)

While the fish is baking, heat the remaining 1 teaspoon of canola oil in a big frying pan and sautee the garlic for one minute. Add the spinach and toss for 1-2 minutes, or until its good and wilted

Combine the quinoa, salmon, and spinach in a bowl, and eat.

Now, for my own personal tweaks on Tree’s awesomeness.

Starting with the fish: I used coho salmon instead of sockeye. I’m not sure what difference there is, but I know that the coho was pretty darn good. I also discovered that my cilantro was in somewhat lackluster condition, so I used about a tablespoon of that and a tablespoon of roughly chopped fresh parsley. Since I don’t own canola oil, I used my extra virgin olive oil, and I also added some fresh cracked pepper with the kosher salt and ginger.

Moving on, I doubled the spinach and the garlic, and again used olive oil in place of the canola.I’ve been on a major spinach kick lately, and I’ve always been more than a little bit addicted to garlic.

As far as the quinoa, I read somewhere during my random Googling yesterday that it needed to be washed/soaked before use, so I soaked it for 15 minutes in hot water, drained it, and then started the boiling process. Once the quinoa finished cooking, it smelled and tasted a little bland, so I added a dash of garlic powder and a little bit of salt and pepper before mixing everything together for the final product.

DH was a little weirded out by the appearance of the quinoa at first, but he actually really seemed to enjoy the dish. I think my next experiment will be a quinoa risotto; I can’t wait!

A friend of mine from high school posted this recipe on her Facebook page yesterday, and it screamed “Fall!” to me when I read it. Granted, here in wonderful southern Arizona, it’s still 100* during the day, and there’s not a trace of fall anywhere other than in stores. There are parts of me that still miss being a little kid and seeing the the Appalachian leaves changing, and smelling that autumn-y smell in the air…But I digress.

Pancakes. Delectable, beautiful pancakes…Pancakes that, for once in my life, I almost exactly followed a recipe to make. That recipe, straight from Meghan’s post, is:

Buttermilk syrup

1 cube butter

1 cup sugar.

Boil for a couple of minutes, then add:

1/2 cup buttermilk

Remove from heat and add:

1/2 t. baking soda

1 t. vanilla

Stir. It will foam up; serve hot for best taste

Pumpkin Pancakes

2 cups flour

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1 t. ground cinnamon

1/4 t. ground ginger

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

2 Tbs. oil

2 Tbs. brown sugar

1 t. salt

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 3/4 cup milk

1 large egg

Mix dry stuff. Mix wet stuff. Mix together. Make pancakes. (duh!) Eat.

~~~

The only change I made to the pancakes themselves was purely accidental. Instead of 1/2 c. pureed pumpkin, I used 3/4 c.; my brain shorted out, I grabbed the wrong measuring cup, and didn’t realize it until I looked at my recipe printout again.

As far as the buttermilk syrup went, I put the butter and sugar into a saucepan as directed, but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how two tablespoons of butter and a cup of sugar was going to boil. I went ahead and added the buttermilk, and that seemed to work out nicely. Also, I had to dash into the office and look up what a cube of butter MEANT, because for whatever reason, that unit just didn’t make any sense to me this morning. (FYI: a quarter of a stick of butter, or two tablespoons, is almost exactly cube-shaped.) Also, somewhere along the lines, the vortex that steals socks from the dryer and makes my keys disappear when I’m running late also decided to eat my box of baking soda, so I used 1/4 tsp of baking powder instead. I probably had less foam than Meghan mentioned, but it still tasted FANTASTIC.

Yum. I think I might go have a food coma nap now.

Also, stay tuned for Cilantro-Ginger Salmon with Spinach & Quinoa; quinoa is probably one of my new favorites!

I started out with a healthy, gorgeous meal in mind: broiled lemon tilapia and cauliflower “mashed potatoes”.  I carefully washed and cut the cauliflower and put it into seasoned water, just like I have a million times. The difference – this time I didn’t do my usual half potato half cauliflower trick. Once the pieces of the dreaded white vegetable were tender, I drained them and put them back in the pot with a drizzle of milk, some low-fat cream cheese, and about a teaspoon of prepared horseradish, then proceeded to attack them with my old hand masher. After several minutes of venting my inner frustrations on the poor cauliflower, it became readily apparent that something was wrong. Instead of the creamy awesomeness I usually get from the potato/cauliflower mix, I had something that was roughly the same texture as couscous, with about as much flavor as a cardboard box. We’ll fast forward through several minutes of frantically adding salt and garlic and whatever else came to hand, and skip to the part where my awesome husband (aka guinea pig) ate a big bite of the cauliflower travesty, grimaced, then smiled and told me it was fine and they weren’t THAT bad. *headdesk* I have to say here, though, that if you enjoy cauliflower without disguising it, this recipe may actually work for you. DH and I both dislike the general flavor of cauliflower, and it usually has to be pretty well hidden for us to enjoy it.

Now, let’s move on to the tilapia, which was decent, even if it was part of the shameful blandness that was last night’s dinner. This was another recipe I’ve made countless times but for whatever reason, the kitchen gods weren’t smiling down on me and it just didn’t quite come together. Ordinarily, half a cup of lemon juice, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 2-3 tbsp of lemon zest or diced lemon peel, 2 tbsp Louisiana Red hot sauce, and about a teaspoon each of  salt and pepper comes together into a nice marinade for fish. Let the fish soak in the mixture for half an hour or so, then either grill, bake, or broil. We chose to broil for roughly 4-5 minutes per side last night, which left us with perfectly cooked fish that was firm and slightly flaky. You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that those fish fillets would’ve made awesome fish tacos…

I just had a light bulb turn on in my head: “marinade for fish.” Marinade. I didn’t let that fish sit for even half as long as I should have! I guess that’s what I get for rushing greatness.

Anyways…you might be wondering what was so terrible about under-marinaded fish and the great cauliflower debacle. Consider, if you will, the color of both foods. Tilapia: white. Cauliflower: white. My gorgeous square plates received as a wedding gift: white. To be fair, the diced lemon peel on the fish gave a slight yellowish cast, but overall, our entire meal was devoid of color.

I’ll have to redeem myself tonight.

I started back to work full time in March, and I LOVE my job. Cooking beautiful meals (and taking pictures of them) fell somewhat by the wayside while I re-adjusted to the working world. Our wedding was May 1, and it was awesome. Thank you again to EVERYONE who made it a success. We spent a week in Saint Lucia for our honeymoon, and I find myself wishing sometimes that we could just live there. It’s a beautiful country, and the people were very friendly.

A short three weeks after our honeymoon, I had surgery on my ankle. Again, cooking in our house went back to boxes of this or frozen bags of that. I’m now just over three months post-op, finally out of the walking cast and re-learning to walk normally, and starting to get back to the kitchen time I love so much. Speaking of kitchens – We also moved! The gentleman that owned the home we were renting let it go into foreclosure, and now we’re back to apartment life. It’s taking some definite adjustments, but we love our new home.

A lot of the recipes I’ve been making lately have been low-calorie, simply because DH and I are starting to watch our waistlines a bit more carefully than ever before. I’m also using more fresh and natural ingredients since I discovered this amazing invention called a farmer’s market.

Stay tuned for my first new recipe posting sometime within the next few days!

I doubled the original recipe for this batch since I was baking for more than just Santa cookies this year; all measurements are easily halved for a smaller batch. I brought a tray of these and some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies to the last painting critique of the semester last night, and they were all a big hit. The PB chocolate chip cookie recipe will follow this post.

Start out with one and a half cups of shortening, 2 cups of white sugar, and half a cup of molasses. Combine until well blended, then add 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of cloves, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of ginger, and 2 teaspoons of baking soda. This part smells amazing; it was enough to distract my Fi from the James Bond movie he was watching on TV while I baked. Once the spices and eggs are blended in, add four cups of flour, one cup at atime. The trick with these cookies is keeping the dough balls fairly small. To remind myself of that, I used our old ice cream scoop to measure the cookie size. Roll each ball of dough in a small amount of granulated sugar, and place them roughly two inches apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Baking time sort of depends on your cookie preference; if you want the cookies to be soft and chewy, bake them at 350* for 11-12 minutes. For a crisper, snappier cookie, leave them in the oven for an extra 2-3 minutes. When the cookies come out of the oven, cool them on a baking rack or a double layer of paper towels, and enjoy!

Grandma’s Ginger Snaps

(recipe has been doubled; yeild: approximately 5 dozen cookies)

1 1/2 cups shortening

2 cups granulated/white shgar

1/2 cup molasses

2 eggs

2 teaspoons cloves

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons ginger

2 teaspoons baking soda

4 cups AP flour

Extra 1/4 – 1/2 cup granulated sugar for rolling

Combine shortening, sugar, molasses, eggs, and spices until well mixed, then add in the flour one cup at a time. Using an ice cream scoop measure out small balls of dough, roll them in the extra white sugar, and place them on a lightly greased cookie sheet. For soft, chewy cookies: bake at 350* for 11-12 minutes; for crisper cookies, leave them in the oven an additional 2-3 minutes. Cool on bakers racks or a double layer of paper towels.

Start out by heating 2 cups of heavy cream, 4 cups of canned tomato sauce, a cup and a half of Italian diced tomatoes, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, and a stem of basil. Leave the basil all in one piece – you’ll be removing it before serving. Cook until simmering, stirring every 3-5 minutes to keep everything even. When the basil is wilted and the soup is nice and hot, remove the basil stem, and enjoy.

Tomato Basil Soup

2 cups heavy cream

4 cups canned tomato sauce

1 1/2 cups Italian diced tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 stem of basil (with leaves)

Heat all ingredients over medium heat until simmering. When the basil stem is wilted, remove it from the soup. Serve and enjoy.

This is a recipe I usually resort to sometime during the week or two after Thanksgiving, right about the time I’m fed up with turkey and just want to use it all and make it go away. Start off with one large bunch of celery, 8-10 whole carrots (or a bag of baby ones), half an onion, 4 teaspoons of minced garlic, and 2 tablespoons of butter. Slice the celery and carrots and cook them until nearly tender in a pan with the other ingredients. While the veggies are cooking, heat 10-12 cups of turkey (or chicken) stock in a large stock pot to a nice hearty simmer, then add one bag of egg noodles and 3-5 cups of chopped turkey meat. When the noodles are cooked, slowly add the vegetables into the stock pot. Continue cooking until everything is nice and soft, and enjoy.

Turkey Soup

1 large bunch of celery

8-10 whole carrots (one good-sized bag of baby carrots)

1/2 onion

4 teaspoons/cloves minced garlic

2 tablespoons butter

1 bag egg noodles

10-12 cups turkey (or chicken) stock

3-5 cups chopped turkey meat

Salt and pepper to taste

Slice celery and carrots, cook in skillet with onion, garlic, and butter until mostly tender. Heat turkey stock until simmering, add egg noodles and turkey meat. When the noodles are cooked, add the vegetables to the stock, and cook until soft.