Eating Dinner With My Family

It's a cheating post!  I made these yesterday, but for tonight's meatless Monday dinner we made cauliflower soup out of some cauliflower I hade from FPP. It is a repeat, but it is magical that it turns one of my son's veto ingredients in to something he eats. No not eats but devours. (And I smugly say see you don't hate cauliflower!). As for the drink, YUM!  It was perfect for me, but my husband found them a bit fiery and diluted them with some tomato juice.  That didn't stop him from still enjoying them ;).  I loved this take on one of my favorite cocktails. Kimchi Bloody Mary 2 packed cups kimchi (16 ounces) 46 ounces tomato juice 1/4 Cup Sriracha chile sauce 2 Tbl Worcestershire sauce 2 Tbl sherry vinegar Salt Freshly ground pepper 2 Cup vodka (16 ounces) Ice Mint sprigs or shiso leaves for garnish 1. Working in batches, puree the kimchi with the tomato juice, Sriracha, Worcestershire and vinegar. Set a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and str...

I am afraid of what you will think of me when I say what I am about to say.  Please don't judge me too harshly, but I have never seen Breaking Bad.  Still with me?  Ok, my husband is watching it on Netflix, and I think I would like the show, but I really hate mob movies and all the killing and violence in them and I have lumped (I am told unfairly) Breaking Bad in to this genre.  As such, I have as much desire to watch it as I do to eat sweet and savory together.  (regular readers inside joke;)  But any reason for a party and themed food works for me, so when I saw that The Savory was suggesting this Breaking Bad Burger, I was so in.  (like I need a reason for burgers in this house)  it wasn't too hard to prep, but when I was cooking the burgers they broke and it was bad! (I know groan!). But it's true. The burgers didn't stay together well. I managed to keep one intact for the picture, but a few of them had a ring crumble off and I had ...

My son requested shrimp tonight.  I like shrimp well enough, but I hate peeling them.  And even though I buy 'deveined' I always need to get rid of that little bit by the tail that they never seem to get rid of.   So I was poised to be annoyed and not very impressed with the dish. I gotta admit, they were really good and it was super fast to make. (OCD peeling of the shrimp aside)  I got a baguette and quickly made a green salad and dinner was done in about 15-20 minutes.  Sizzled Shrimp Provençal   1/4 Cup extra-virgin olive oil 1 1/2 Lb jumbo shrimp peeled and deveined Salt and freshly ground pepper 2 large garlic cloves very finely chopped 2 Tbl small capers drained 1/4 Cup fresh lemon juice 2 Tbl finely chopped flat-leaf parsley 1.In a very large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil until shimmering. Season the shrimp generously with salt and pepper. Add the shrimp to the skillet and cook over high heat until they...

I had bought shiitakes for a meal I didn't end up making.  I needed to do something with them because I didn't want them going bad.  Not only are they my favorite mushroom, but they are on the pricey side.  I found this in the to try file and thought it fit the bill perfectly.  Now I did mess up a bit, which consequently caused my only complaint with the dish: I had 1/2 the mushrooms called for.  I was thinking of the packages in terms of the regular mushrooms which are 8 oz each.  I had 2 packages of shiitakes, so I was thinking I had 1 lb of them.  Well oops, the shiitakes are 3.5 oz each.  Having half the mushrooms needed was not a making for a perfect dish, but on the bright side, I decided this dish was a great base for a lot of  veggies.  All I need to do in the future is pick one that could cook like the snow peas in the pasta water (broccoli, cauliflower, carrot coins) and one that I will sauté.  The sauce was really great, ...

My husband choose this throwback Thursday dish.  I followed the sauce recipe, but the meatballs I played around with a little bit.  Mostly, I just made my life easy by getting the meatloaf package of ground beef/pork rather than get a package of both meats and most likely have odd bits I didn't need for tonight's dinner.  As always, if you don't eat beef or pork, you can switch out the meat for other ones, but the beef & pork combo is traditional and I think the tastiest.  I totally am loving the greens in the meatballs.  I don't know where I first saw this idea (and it was most like spinach that was in the original recipe), but I have used collards and now bok choy with fantastic results.  (my next experiment will involve the leavings from my juicing, but that is for another time:)  I also love coating the meatballs in bread crumbs. This coating absorbs the juices (and fat) cooking out of the meatball and adds a lot of flavor and a nice crisp...

I was so very excited to have delicata squash in my Front Porch Pickings Basket.  I love squash but have never had delicata before.  (refer to my many previous posts advocating being in a csa or finding a purveyor of local/organic produce)  I knew going in however, that this dish was about as far out of the zone of types of food I like as you can get and I was worried a bit.  I say all the time I do not like sweet and savory together. (I do not like them Sam I am)  I am constantly being pointed out to, by my husband, that, that isn't true, I have found plenty of dishes I like that have both. (like the lamb and date tagine ) However, that doesn't stop me from having a prejudice and an inherent dislike of them mixed.  I did object to the flavor and texture to the apples, and I thought the over all dish was too sweet for me, personally.  (the delicata was very sweet and delicious all by it's self)  That being the said, I like the dish way more ...

We are all sitting here, wretched full, because it was a really great dinner. Not only is it pretty easy (super easy if you buy tortilla chips rather than make them, but it's totally worth it to make them yourself it really doesn't add that much time, and you can avoid all the chemicals and such by making your own), but it is tasty and economical!   I did alter the recipe a bit.  First of all, we didn't need a whole chicken worth of meat for the 4 of us to eat, and since we had 1 & 1/2 breasts left over from the hobbit dinner, I shredded them and just made a few more tortillas worth of chips to make sure we didn't have too much sauce to filling.  So obviously an other change was more tortilla chips.  I also used Parmesan in place of the cotja cheese, but feta would work too if that is what you have in your fridge.  Oh and the onion I had was really big, so when the rest of the veggies came out of the oven, I separated the quarters in to thirds by t...