Too hot to write/Too cool to care about writing today

Without getting terribly descriptive, here's our "lobster" (you know, that surimi stuff) salad hoagies and Caesar salad (I forgot to link to the dressing recipe last time - I followed this fairly strictly [for a change]).

 Tonight I (again) waited till the last minute to decide what was for dinner and had the Boy go on a search mission in the freezer for some sort of protein. He came up with some boneless skinless chicken breasts, and he had brought home some fresh asparagus, so I thought a stirfry with kung pao sauce over rice noodles sounded like a delicious idea. I was right!

Later, there shall be strawberry scented cake with a creamy vanilla-y frosting. And coffee. It's my Friday night and I don't want to sleep it away!

Almost Meatless Monday - Pizza Pizza and Caesar Salad

I found a fab new pizza pan whilst shopping on Monday (new and everything - not from a thrift store!) so of course a big (because that pan is BIG) cheese pizza immediately went on the menu for dinner. I had a serious craving for a real Caesar salad and bought the ingredients I would need (namely a tin of anchovies, hence the "almost" meatless nomenclature) to make a big garlicky salad to go with the pizza. It's amazing to me how completely the anchovies simply morph into a salty, savory addition to the dressing, without really adding a hint of fishy taste.

I was going to be lazy and buy jarred pizza sauce, but I completely forgot and had to make a quick batch from scratch. To do it I simply opened a can of tomato sauce and added chopped garlic (I used dehydrated), a glug of olive oil, dried thyme, dried oregano, salt, pepper and about a teaspoon and a half of red pepper flakes. I let the sauce simmer on a very low heat for probably a couple of hours, though it really could have used more to reduce further. It worked but it was a bit thinner than I would have liked. I was also surprised at the heat the relatively small amount of red pepper flakes imparted into the sauce. Generally I'm not a fan of the flakes, because I dislike the crunch of the seeds, but in this sauce, they were fine. I made a very simple crust out of a packet of fast-rising yeast, about two cups of flour, a splash of olive oil and some salt and water. I let it rise for rather longer than usual (well over an hour) and it ended up being a nice, elastic dough.

I meant to add some fresh basil chiffonade, but I completely forgot. That is a regret, but the pizza was good nonetheless.

Pan-Fried Chicken and Something-a-Roni and Plants

I put off making dinner last night up until the very moment before the Boy became frantic. He likes a more uniform meal schedule and sometimes I challenge him that way. But sometimes I just can't force cooking inspiration, particularly with something so variable as chicken breasts.

Lacking any other inspiration, I seasoned the breasts and put them in a hot skillet and cooked them till crispy and done. After I took it out the pan, I made a teeny bit of cream gravy with the drippings. I had a hankering for my version of Rice-a-Roni which means browning broken up spaghetti noodles and rice with onions, and then adding bullion (I used beef because that's what I had) and simmering until the rice is done. Easy, cheap and so much tastier than the boxed stuff. We also still had leftovers of the stewed okra so that became the other side dish.

Today I had plans to try to make pretty wearable things out of my ceramic pieces. So far, I have not been inspired in that direction. Instead, I went outside (in the lovely weather) and potted and re-potted a bunch of plants I had hanging around. I don't know where I'm going to put them all once the weather changes, particularly since the kittens will be hard to thwart and they surely do like chewing on plants. Perhaps I should plant a pot of cat grass for them.

Thrifty thrifting

The Goodwill Outlet on Market, just off Vandeventer, is one bustling place. At 1:30 on a Friday afternoon the joint was packed. I noticed that a good number of the patrons were wearing rubber gloves which is a seriously good idea as I've washed my hands a couple of times and they still feel kind of grotty. I was hoping that maybe the store was providing the gloves, but it didn't seem that way.

After poking around in many of the bins, here's what we got. First a vintage green plaid plate. I just really like that pattern; it looks like rubbery wallpaper.

 A big blue-striped crock. I don't think this is a vintage one, but it's not terribly new either.

 

I have some other little shallow bowls in this pattern. Not sure what this was for though it perhaps was a little crock and is missing its lid.

 This tote bag isn't vintage, but I figured I could add it to my arsenal of reusable shopping bags. It's a cute print, as far as Hawaiian prints go.

A little enamel bin and lid.

A quilted-on-the-inside flannel shirt for the Boy, in his size!

The Boy kept digging and kept finding these funny little dime books. Lurid covers and titles!

How to make puppets from anything.

Coronet Magazine from 1965!

Sports books and short stories.

Hawaiian plate lunch...er...dinner

As is often the case, today's dinner inspiration came courtesy of my daily Allrecipes.com email and a recipe for shoyu chicken. Shoyu chicken is the Hawaiian version of teriyaki, basically, and it generally uses chicken thighs. I've written about my previous foray into a plate lunch after having it served from a Portland food truck (though really that post is more about getting a new Macbook...) but I see that I didn't write at all about the recipes. So I shall fix that here.

For my version of shoyu chicken I used skinless, boneless breasts (I don't generally buy them, but they were on sale) and marinated them in the following mixture.

Shoyu Sauce

1/4 cup of something I bought called "medium soy sauce" - it's quite sweet and molasses-y so no need to add extra sugar
2 T regular soy sauce
1 big, fat clove of garlic, smushed in a garlic press
2 t siracha
Black pepper
Two slices of crystallized ginger, finely chopped (I didn't have fresh and this works particularly well considering the sweetness already in the recipe)

I marinated the chicken for an hour or so, then grilled it on the indoor grill (waaaaaay too hot for the firepit today!). In the meantime, I boiled the marinade for a couple minutes so I could use it as a sauce. I basted the chicken halfway through cooking, and then dunked them in the sauce after they were done cooking.

Earlier I prepared the macaroni salad so there would be time for the flavors to marry and mellow; the onion can be somewhat harsh if eaten right away. The basic recipe is very simple and I got the basis here. I only added grated carrot to mine, to best match what I had in Portland. And I most definitely didn't use two cups of mayonnaise.

To finish this carbolicious plate, I made plain white rice, which I drizzled with the shoyu sauce. And because we needed some vegetable other than that bit of grated carrot, I made a salad of tomato, cucumber and rice vinegar with a teeny splash of oil.

Mai e `a! Aloha!

Meatless Monday - Vegan steak fail, okra win

I've had a bag of VegeUSA dried vegan "steaks" for months but I've been a bit afraid to attempt them. I'm good with TVP in small chunks or pieces. Once it gets bigger, it's a little iffy. To prepare these things, I had to soak them in water first, then wring them out (ick), and then marinate before cooking. I made a mixture of soy, siracha, garlic, vegetable broth, peper and a bit of oil and let them soak it up for 45 minutes or so. When I got ready to cook them, I heated the indoor grill and let them cook until they had nice grill marks on their fake beefy sides.

I also had a grocery bag full of fresh, home grown okra courtesy of our generous friend Thomas. While I had intended to make a dish that involved chick pea flour and deep frying with it, I just didn't feel like the mess, the smell or the calories of all that oil. Hopefully fresh okra will be around long enough till it's cooler outside and frying isn't so oppressive. At any rate, I decided to go the stewing route with the okra. I have very little okra experience as I refused to eat it until a few years ago and only started cooking it in the last year or so.

I started with heating some canola oil and adding a chopped medium onion, then the sliced okra (I know you can eat the stem part, but I cut them off), then three chopped medium tomatoes, including all the juice. To make it more stew-y, I poured in about half a cup or so of tomato juice and about an equal amount of water, and seasoned with salt and pepper. Then I decided to add about a cup of frozen corn kernals, as well. At one point I thought I had over-salted so I mixed in about a tablespoon of sugar, which sort of mellowed everything out in a nice way. I let this simmer for about 30-35 minutes, wherein it thickened up nicely. I guess that sticky okra goo is good for something! To serve under the okra, I made some quick cooking grits, then stirred in a bit of butter and some grated cheese (I happened to have some Mexican shredded mix so I used that).

Then came the tasting. The "steaks" were strangely (authentically?) stringy, like a cheap piece of beef. The flavor wasn't great, which was my fault for not highly seasoning the marinade. While the Boy ate his up, I could not deal with the weird texture, which was also a little slimy, for good measure. Foxy Brown got the remainder of one of my slices and I'm not sure of the fate of the other. I suspect the Boy put it in the refrigerator whereas I would have put it straight into the trash. Lesson learned!

Firepit Cooking: Don't tell me this isn't barbecue

Even though it was rather hot yesterday, I couldn't get the idea of barbecued pork steaks out of my head. Since the propane grill is non-functioning at the moment, that left the firepit unless I wanted to turn on the oven. And I didn't want to turn on the oven. Firepit it was. Since I'm too much of a cheapskate, at present anyway, to spring for real firewood, I burned some of the many sticks in the yard the first time around. I was a little afraid I wouldn't have enough large pieces to get some significant heat and fire this time around, but I did manage it. I'm sure wood fire cooking purists would be absolutely horrified that I am just scrounging whatever sticks I find and using them to cook food. I suppose that there is a mixture of elm from next door, mimosa, maple and my mystery tree that is some sort of ornamental cherry (maybe, I've never been able to identify it).

Whatever the wood is I've been using in the firepit, it really does make food taste good. Since I was using so many smaller pieces of wood, I had a lot of embers really quickly so I placed separate foil pouches of potatoes and broccoli down in them to get cooking. I got a little thrill from seeing the packets swell up with steam; then I knew it was all cooking! Very exciting! (Yes, cooking vegetables gets me excited. What about it?) When it was time to cook the pork steaks, I gathered up my biggest pieces of wood and added one to the fire. I liked the idea of cooking the meat over actual flames and kept the fire stoked until the steaks were nearly done. After I basted them with sauce, I let the fire die out so the sauce would caramelize gently and slowly.

The potatoes and broccoli were both seasoned with canola oil, salt and pepper. I added garlic to potato packet and after the broccoli was done I splashed on a little lemon juice and dusted with parmesan cheese. 

Bacon and eggs

Bacon and eggs go together like...bacon and eggs. Pasta alla carbonara is one of my favorite ways to eat bacon and eggs when it's not breakfast time and it's a completely simple and very delicious dish. All you need is hot pasta (and I will say it again: PASTA BOAT!), beaten egg, grated cheese and bacon (or pancetta, of course). To Friday night's dish I also added some chopped parsley and basil (swiped from Deb's garden - thanks, Deb!) and the basil added a really nice level of flavor. A touch of cream can be really good added to carbonar, but I didn't have any and I didn't really miss it.

Feeling somewhat lackadaisical about dinner Saturday night and having neglected to get anything else out of the freezer, I turned to bacon and eggs again. This time in a spinach salad with a fried egg on top. Spinach, tomato, leftover potatoes crisped in bacon grease (!), bacon, and croutons tossed with balsamic vinaigrette, topped with a crispy edged fried egg (in bacon grease!).

I feel a bit like the dog in that treat commercial, "It's bacon!"