My morning feast

Every so often I work a 8.5 hour day at the coffee shop. We do not have a microwave so my food options involve either sandwhiches, food from the coffee shop (which is good, but gets a little old) or snack type food. I'm no good at packing a lunch for these days. Luckily my coffee shop shares strip mall space with Trader Joes.

When I'm faced with my 1/2 hour break, I tend to wander over there to the produce section and pick up some nourishment. Prior feast included: whole wheat bread, gourmet chicken salad with currants and almonds, chili lime cashews and an organic banana (single handedly one of the BEST bananas I swear I've ever eaten). Today, given my greek food cravings, my feast was:

• Mini Pita bread circles (not chips, actual pita bread)
• Hummus
• Organic Strawberries (OMG so sweet and flavorful, not as pretty as the non-organic ones, but taste was so much better!)
• 2 organic bananas. 

From this post, one could infer that I'm an organic foodie/snob. But I'm actually not. I usually can't justify the extra cost. I wish I could afford/justify to go organic though because when I do, it usually tastes so much better! There is one area where I feel going organic is just a waste of money: Processed foods. Do you really need those Froot Loops in organic form? My guess is probably not.....

I will say that my feast (4 mini pitas, about 2 Tbsp hummus, 5 strawberries and 2 bananas) left me satiated for the whole day... well until now. Now I'm HUNGRY. So it's time to make some dinner....

Upcoming kitchen adventures

Homemade Pita bread
Homemade Tzatziki sauce
Homemade Hummus

In turn, I plan on making my own souvlaki chicken again only doing it on skewers on the grill with red pepper.
Hopefully this attempt will get dear fiance into Greek food.. or I'll have a very special treat for myself....

What's for dinner? Greek Lemon chicken breasts

I'm a little late in making dinner tonight so I don't get to marinade these as long as I should but I found a recipe for Greek chicken souvlaki and I swiped the marinade recipe for my chicken breasts.

I added 1/2 cup of white wine to the marinade and a pinch of dried rosemary and marinaded it for 15 minutes. Baked in 400 degree convection oven for 30 minutes.

Recipe:

• 1 c. lemon juice
• 1/2 c. white wine
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 1/3 sweet onion, diced
• 1T diced garlic -- I like garlic
• 1 tsp salt
• pinch of pepper
• a smattering of dried oregano
• a pinch of rosemary.
• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts

I put the chicken breasts in a small baking dish and added the marinade to just below covering the chicken and put in the oven for 30 minutes. In the last 10 minutes, I threw in a 2 minute broiling session and finished off baking at 400 degrees.

I paired this with the very uninspiring: Knorr rice sides: Chicken and Broccoli. :-/  I really need to go grocery shopping so I have options!

Results:
Very tangy! The lemon-wine combination was a bit overwhelming/strong at first bite, but after that, I really enjoyed this dish. It seemed to get fiance approval. I'm almost glad I didn't marinade it too much longer than the 15 minutes I did.

I would love to try this skewered with peppers on the grill with some homemade tzatziki (sp?) sauce and pita bread. MMMM... greek food.

I will still continue my search for great chicken souvlaki recipes....

brightening up a blah day by baking...

Today is a pot luck for my book club.  A good person would have at least picked out the dessert she was going to make for today, yesterday. Did I do that? Nope. So this morning about 11am I remembered saying I was going to bake something.

Qualifications:

1. had to be fairly quick to make so it could cool in the appropriate amount of time
2. kid-friendly
3. I needed to have ingredients on hand

I would up deciding on chocolate cupcakes using my Hershey's perfectly chocolate cake recipe. I also had a spare cake mix in the cabinet that's been there since I lived in Rochester. Because I didn't know how it would turn out I decided to use it for a trifle. I also have been digging for an excuse to use my shiny new trifle bowl! 

First, the chocolate cupcakes:

I used my standard recipe, but the first batch came out too flat on the top.  

So I was reading one of my recipe books and I decided that maybe the 1 c of water the recipe calls for is a bit too much. That its creating too dense of cake to rise properly. Coupled with underfilling the cups and I wound up with flat dense cupcakes. I quickly added two heaping spoonfuls of flour to the mix and whisked it in. The 2nd batch of cupcakes turned out much better! See, a comparison:

Onward to the trifle:

I needed whippped cream, but my current was still frozen. Unwilling to buy a whole new tub, I decided to use my leftover heavy whipping cream and make my own. I did a quick search on cooks.com and found the following recipe:

1/2 pint heavy whipping cream

3T sugar-- i used ultra fine bakers sugar, but plain ol granulated will work just fine.

1T vanilla

Beat whipping cream til starting to thicken

add sugar and vanilla

beat until fluffy.

here's my whipping cream:

Another picture of it:

Now that I have the whipping cream. I need pudding. Jello makes a mean instant pudding but that would require a trip to the grocery store. So, I found a recipe for homemade pudding at cooks.com.

Just mix together 1 heaping T cocoa, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 hea ping T flour. Add 2 cups milk (I did 1 cup chocolate milk, 1 cup skim). Stir over low heat until thickened. Add 1 T butter and 1tsp vanilla. Voila, pudding!

  *I'll stick to Jello. This recipe took forever to thicken and never really got to be the consistency I expected.

So now I needed to put the whole trifle together. I alternated cake, pudding and whipped cream layers. For the top, I was low on whipped cream-- and I wanted to make it look prettier, so I used redi-whip instead. Then I drizzled caramel and chocolate syrup over the top.  

Tada: Trifle!

And instead of chocolate frosting, I went for vanilla frosting dyed pink/purple

What's for Dinner? 5-23-2010: Spicy oven fried Perch

Tonight's adventure with fish involved my first time cooking perch. While its not too big of departure from the haddock and cod I grew up exposed to, I've mostly cooked salmon or tilapia.. I was looking for cod when I went to the fish counter at Rainbow, but perch was on sale, so perch became the fish for this dish. (tee hee that rhymed...)

My inspiration tonight was taken from the Pampered Chef Stoneware Inspirations cookbook that I received long before I was a consultant. I'd never made anything from it and decided it was time to dust it off and give a recipe a try. So all that talking and I haven't even said what I'm making.

Spicy Oven Fried Cod(Perch) 

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

Sauce:

• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• 1/2 c thousand island dressing
• 1 clove/tsp minced garlic
• 1 green onion (I omitted as I didn't have one, but added a touch of onion powder to the sauce to replace)
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

1. Mix ingredients together
2. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour (to ensure flavors mix: especially if you use fresh garlic and onion)

Fish: -- about 4 small fillets

• 1/2 c seasoned bread crumbs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• dash of cayenne pepper
• dash of black pepper
• 1 egg

1. Beat egg in small bowl
2. Mix remaining ingredients in shallow dish
3. Dip fish in egg
4. Dip into bread crumb mixture covering both sides
5. Lightly spray pan with non stick cooking spray (I used Crisco Olive Oil Spray)
6. Lay breaded fish onto a stoneware baking sheet or nice quality baking sheet (cooking time may have to be adjusted)
7. Drizzle a couple drops lemon juice on each filet
8. Cook for approximately 15 minutes
9. Serve with chilled sauce on the side

VERDICT:


I was not overly impressed with this recipe, but I'm still sick so my taste may not be to full capacity. This recipe did get the fiance stamp of approval so I'll try to work it into the repertoire. It seemed to have subtle spice but may be lacking on other flavor. It was very reminiscent of my hometown fish fry with a spicier kick/twist.

The sides that I served with the fish did not fully complement the fish (a chicken flavored rice side and corn). A future suggestion would be roasted asparagus or roasted broccoli Parmesan and a salad may have done more to bring out the variety of flavor.

What's for Dinner 5/18/2010 Honey BBQ Chicken, salad

Its been a while since I've posted a "What's for dinner" update. I have been in a bit of a cooking dead zone. Aside from a very beautiful chocolate cake I made on mother's day and a Strawberry Amaretto Pastry I've made for Pampered Chef events, my cooking has been largely uninspired.

Even my Mother's Day Feast (I somehow confused cooking for 5 with cooking for 15, I had THAT much food) was not very inspired: baked potatoes, roasted asparagus --although it was my first time ever cooking asparagus-- marinated steak and salads.

Anyway, back to todays meal:

Todays Menu will be: Honey BBQ Chicken, salads and potato wedges.

Potato wedges- courtesy of Oreida

Honey BBQ Sauce-- courtesy of www.cooks.com
I added about a tsp of Worcestershire sauce and extra garlic and chili powder to taste. I use 1/2 the sauce for the recipe and store the rest in a jar with lid (old pickle jars work great for this!) in the refrigerator.

• I took the 1/2 of the homemade honey bbq sauce I intended to use and poured over 3 chicken breasts in a deep glass pyrex dish lined with foil and covered it with more foil. 
• I, then cooked it in a 425 oven for 30 minutes, basting it every 10 minutes.
• At 30 minutes, I uncovered it to cook for another 10 minutes.

A very easy meal to throw together, once the inital BBQ sauce is made.

in the spirit of new frugality and reducing waste: Lettuce saving tips

I found a fairly useful article on yahoo. Whoa! Shocker. Most of their articles prove to be useless but this one has some tips I may take away from it to prolong how long my romaine lasts.

When I first started buying lettuce, I'd buy the bagged stuff. I noticed it usually lasted for maybe a day before going past the point my finicky palate would put up with so I'd end up tossing 3/4 of a bag. Plus the mixture in the bags was predominantly the white harder part of the lettuce leaf that I absolutely could not stomach at that early point in my lettuce tolerance. So I moved onto the fancy pants world of clam case (the hard plastic case) of organic greens. And, oooo!, did I love those! They were so much better than that bagged stuff. But of course, being organic AND in a fancy container meant they cost around $5. Not to mention the decreased shelf life and tendency to throw out 1/2 of the container.

As frugality became my way of life, I started buying heads of romaine for 1.49-2.00$ at the grocery store. I figured, if I'm getting that and end up throwing 1/2 of it away, I'm still being more cost effective than the fancy pants organic stuff and probably even the bags. So that's how I roll now. :) But it still doesn't last excessively long so when I saw this article, I decided I must try some of these:

The best tip that I will try with my next lettuce purchase:

It’s worthwhile to rinse the greens, shake them to remove some of the moisture, and then roll them in a clean cotton dishtowel or a clean cotton pillowcase.  The fabric will become damp, which is good.  Put this rolled setup into the vegetable crisper for quick and easy, access to prepped greens.  This will extend the freshness for many days.

Never thought to do that. I'll admit, I actually don't rinse my greens. *insert shock and awe here* I don't because rinsing the whole thing and putting it back in the fridge wet will just speed up the spoiling process and because... well I'm just too lazy. But maybe this towel trick will work and I'll be a changed girl, .... or not; but it's worth a try!