Food P0rn

Something I made several weeks ago that sat on my camera til now. Bay scallops and asparagus in a citrus sauce with lots of fresh ground pepper.

Weekend Part Deux

Went to my dad's last night for dinner - something we try to do at least once a month or so. It was my turn to cook, so I made Corned Beef, Cabbage, and Red Potatoes in honor of St Patrick's Day.

Went very basic on the corned beef - just baked it at 325 for about 3 hours, covered but for the last few minutes. It was pretty AND delicous.



Went pretty basic on the potatoes, too - just olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and a bit of rosemary.



Had to use the convection microwave, which I wasn't sure about at first, but it worked great.

Got a little fancier with the cabbage, using something akin to this recipe from Orangette. Super easy, and super yummy.



While dinner cooked, we played some cribbage


(Yeah, my dad is sort of a goof, but we love him)

(Nice hand!)

Dinner was all done about the same time (score!) so we dished up





And after a couple of helpings each, this



turned into this



I loved corned beef before, but I have a new respect for it after baking it (instead of the all-day slow-cooker method). It's cheap, easy, and provides leftovers (sometimes) so this is going to become a staple in my house. I even made Dad run me by the grocery on the way home so I could buy a couple more :)

Flirting, Food, and New and Improved

Cute Guy at Work: "What's goin' on Zarah?"
Me: "Not much, you know, trying to see what kind of trouble I can cause. Got any?"
CG (grinning): "Nope"
Me: "Darn" (thinking, "Want to get into some with me?")

Me, totally swooning that Cute Guy at Work knows my name, and actually used it. Not just a passing "hey" to a co-worker, but a directed-directly-at-me greeting.

Not that I'm really expecting to get anywhere with Cute Guy at Work, or with anybody, but my skills at flirting have been severely under-used for the past five years and I'm looking forward to getting lots of practice now that I'm free.

No Sesame chicken salad yet, but huge thanks to Amy O'Neill Houck at The Hook and I for encouraging me to make dinner last night. We had oodles of leftover noodles so I made spaghetti pie inspired by her well-timed post. Next time more sauce, more cheese, more olives. Have I mentioned how much I love nearly-burnt mozzarella cheese? The kind of nearly-burnt that you can only get at really good Italian restaurants (not the OG type) or by baking your own at home.

This morning I bought three sock patterns from Anne over at Knitspot. I got the Dolomite Sock, So Square Sock, and Tesserae Sock, and can't wait to get started. I'm thinking the Mirasol Hacho in Deep Blue Ocean for the Dolomites, and Koigu KPPPM in the purples/browns color I've got for the Tesseraes. I might get some Wooly Wonka BFL Sock Yarn for the So Square Socks. It's a bit pricey, but I do love that Geisha colorway.

Best of all, my new digital camera was delivered today! So, new and improved pictures are on their way. I got the camera I wanted, a 2GB memory card, and these nifty USB-rechargable AA batteries, all for a steal. So look for lots more pictures soon. Guess it's time to get a Flickr account! Too bad I can't access it at work :(

Sesame Shrimp Love

Another fabulous meal for dinner last night that I had to share!

1 lb. of shrimp (see note)
garlic salt (or garlic powder, if you have it, which I didn't)
sesame oil
rice wine vinegar
teriaki sauce (optional)

Place shrimp in a ziploc or container with a lid and sprinkle liberally with garlic salt/powder, stirring to coat. Add a few tablespoons each of sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. If desired, add a small amount of teriaki sauce. Stir again to coat and refrigerate for half an hour or so.

Pre-heat a large pan over medium-high heat. Place shrimp in the pan in an even layer, reserving the marinade. Cook on one side until pink, then flip shrimp over. Once shrimp are mostly pink on side 2, pour marinade over shrimp and toss together. Serve over rice.

*Note about the shrimp: I used de-veined 10-20's with the shell still on, so this is what I recommend. But this should be just as good with any other kind/size of shrimp you want, so long as they're not precooked "cocktail" shrimp. If you prefer not to get your hands dirty, use already peeled shrimp, but you'll be missing out on the fun ;)

Sesame Coleslaw

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for all things sesame-flavored. It began with ramen, sad to say. One of those 10 for $1.00 brands had a sesame chicken flavor that came with an itty-bitty package of sesame oil. No wait, it was before that. When I was a kid we used to go to this chinese restaurant in St. Helens and I'd eat BBQ Pork with that funky red sauce and then covered in sesame seeds. Anyway, it was love at first taste. So here's a sesame coleslaw recipe I cooked up this morning for breakfast (yes, coleslaw for breakfast).

1 bag of coleslaw mix (mine is mostly plain cabbage with some red cabbage and carrots thrown in for good measure)
Mayo
Rice vinegar
Sesame oil
Black pepper
Sesame seeds (toasted pref.)

Empty the coleslaw mix into a large bowl (big enough to have room to mix)
In a separate container, mix about half a cup of Mayo with a couple of tablespoons of rice vinegar and maybe 1/4 cup of sesame oil, and a dash (or a heavy dose) of pepper. Taste it and adjust quantaties as desired.
About 15 minutes before you want to serve it, pour the "dressing" over the cabbage and mix well. Just before serving, sprinkle liberally with toasted sesame seeds.

*Afterthought: After eating half of this delicious batch, it needs something more. It's good as is, but might be even better with the addition of some cooked/diced chicken, and maybe something crunchy like some chow mein noodles, celery, waterchestnuts, etc. If you try this yourself, let me know how it turns out!

Updates Updates Everywhere

Craft update:
Almost done with item #2 for the SSG Swap. Just have finishing to do. Any more than that would give it away. Also purchased item #5. So items #3 and #4 to do. Goal is to send it out next Friday (which is payday, which is important). Laura, if you read this, will you send me your address please?

Life update:
I am TOTALLY in love with this condo. I went and saw the inside on Wednesday and it is absolutely perfect for me. I'm going to try to borrow money from my dad to pay off my one credit card, and sell the car that Annie and I bought last year and hopefully be able to pay that off too. Then hopefully my credit will be clear enough to get a home loan. If I can't get into this place now, they have two more building sites going up next door and the first of the two should be finished in the summer. Annie wants to leave before then, but I'm hoping that our roommate might pitch in an extra $100 in rent and I could probably afford to stay here for a while. Even better, roommate's girlfriend just got her SSI (social security) and I told him that if she's willing to pitch in $200 or so in rent she can move in here and then we'd be even more set. Roommate's girlfriend isn't my favorite person on earth (she drinks a bit, and gets a bit annoying) but it would be worth it to be able to stay here until I get the condo thing figured out.

Soup update:
I was craving soup. So I made some.
1 whole pre-baked chicken of unknown flavor from Freddy's
some butter. 1/2 a stick or so?
1 sweet onion very chopped
several carrots sliced bite-size
1 head of celery, chopped (including a good amount of the leaves, they're good)
1 package of beef polska kilbasa, halved and sliced into half-moon shapes
1.5-2 pounds of baby gold potatoes cut into halves or quarters depending on size
-Remove chicken from bones. Keep good chicken in one bowl, and place all skin/bones/etc in a large soup pot.
-cover skin/bones/et with cold water and bring to a boil. Boil until it looks yummy. Then strain and reserve the "stock" and toss out the rest.
-Melt butter in the soup pot, and add the onions and some salt & pepper. cook until the onions are soft
-Add the leaves of the celery and cook a little longer
-Add the celery and carrots and the kilbasa and cook a little more
-Add the chicken and the potatoes, then the reserved "stock"
-Cook until the potatoes are done, and then enjoy all your hard work.

Never trust take out

When I go to McDonalds, I expect to have to check my bag and make sure that everything is there. And, of course, the more people ordering, the more likely there will be an error.

But that's McDonalds. I do NOT expect such behavior from the 2nd best bento place within 10 minutes of my job.

What I wanted was 1) A jumbo bento with chicken and beef, 2) A 6-piece gyoza, and 3) a 4-piece veggie spring roll. When I arrived to pick it up, the price was a bit more than it usually is. I didn't want to fuss, so I didn't say anything, and when she handed me the gigantic bag of food, I thought she had mistaken 4 PIECES for 4 ORDERS of spring roll.

I got back to my desk with a mere 2 minutes of my half-hour lunch left, opened the bag, and discovered that I should have made a fuss. A very large fuss. I got the wrong wrong WRONG order! Not even CLOSE to what I was supposed to get! And with 2 minutes of lunch left, I was stuck with it.

So I'm stuck eating stir-fry veggies (x2), pork katsu (x2) and chicken teriaki (x2). Obviously a great deal of this will go home with me, or stay here at work with my name on it in big red letters so that nobody else eats it or throws it away.

Next time, I'm checking.

Shepherd's Pie

My friend Sally bragged yesterday that she and her (going-to-be) husband Phil were going to have Shepherd's Pie for dinner. It got me thinking. I had only tried to make Shepherd's Pie once, several years ago, and at that point had only a very vague understanding of it. Meat. Potatoes. Cheese. How could you screw it up? Well I didn't, but it wasn't anything to write home about either.

So I decided to give it another shot for dinner last night. What follows is what I did. Not a recipe, per se, but a general guide. My methods might be a bit odd, but I got the job done.

I started out by washing what was left of a bag of potatoes. I'd guess there were maybe 3 pounds. We like us some taters. I then used the mandoline that Jen got me for Christmas to slice them. I learned that my mandoline would rather cut long strips of short vegetables, than short strips of tall vegetables. Potatoes went in a pot with water and a handful of salt and left to their own devices.

Next up I melted some butter in my big happy pan and added some garlic-in-a-jar. Rinsed off the mandoline and used it - this time with the "julienne" blade - to chop up half a sweet onion. It turned out more grated than chopped, and I would have done the whole onion but I was getting a little ticked off at the mandoline. But it was fine. With those softened a bit, in went half a pound of pre-cut baby portabella mushrooms, plus a generous pinch of salt and several shakes of pepper. Let them be at not-quite a sautee for a few minutes, stirred once in a while, til the shrooms started to give up some liquid. Then in went two pounds of ground beef. Stir stir, smoosh smoosh (that's a technical term), sit sit. Repeat until ground beef is almost nearly done. Then I added what was left of a bag of frozen mixed veggies we had in the freezer and let it all come back up to temp and let the beef finish cooking. Finally, added two cans of undiluted cream of mushroom soup, mixed well, and turned the stove off and the oven on. About 350.

By then the potatoes were done, so they got drained and put back on the stove. Added a stick of butter and let it sit for a few to let the butter melt. Then I discovered that my potato masher was at the bottom of the pile of dirty dishes. So rather than wash it and mash them, I just went at them with some tongs. I know, not exactly the usual implement of distruction to use on potatoes, but it worked. Added a can of cheddar cheese "soup" to the potatoes, salt & peppered it all, and stirred til it was all the funny off-white color that the soup made them. Might be good to mention here that I did not PEEL the potatoes, because I'm too lazy for that and the skin won't kill you.

All this went in a pan - the ground beef mixture on the bottom and the potatoes spread on top, and then a layer of shredded cheese (I used mexican style pre-shredded because it was what we had) on top of that. Stuck it in the oven and crossed my fingers.

Five minutes later I realized the funny noise I kept hearing was the overflow of burger grease in the pan burning onto the bottom of our oven. Locked up all the animals and opened all the doors. Did I mention it was something like 20 degrees with the wind chill last night? Finally decided that the cheese was melted enough, pulled it out of the oven and let it cool for several minutes.

Annie and Shylent were impressed - Hell so was I. But next time I'm using the giant turkey roasting pan instead of the pyrex 13 x 9. And maybe some french fried onions on top.

Pictures galore!

These are the ladies that Annie and I are spending NYE with - her sister Jen and our friends Karie and Michelle.

Tonight's dinner - Flying Pie Pizza. Yummmmmmmmmm

Annie's, Jen's, and Michelle's shoes :)

Most of the following are from the turkey dinner we made last night. For two holiday meals we got sent home with barely any leftovers, so we made our own and kept all the leftovers to ourselves.

A close up of my infamous World's Best Green Bean Casserole

Annie with the wishbone from our turkey. She's a silly goose.

Just a cute picture of a picture from our wedding, with the wine we drank last night.

Annie's plate - stuffing, taters, WBGBC, Yams, turkey, cranberry sauce. And wine.

The Wilson family cat, Pelly, in his tissue paper hiding spot at Christmas.

Yummy skin-on mashed taters from our dinner. Simple, with just butter and cream and a little salt.

Our turkey. It's not burnt, just well carmelized. I stuffed it with lemon and easy-peel tangerines and basted it with syrup. It was an experiment. Turned out pretty good, it was just the very outside that wasn't quite edible.

Annie carving the turkey

My WBGBC in its pan. I usually put it in another casserole dish for the final bake, but since I have the kind of pans that can go in the oven, I cheated. Annie burned her hand on it :(

The matching pic of Annie from the wedding.

The Cat in the Hat. This is our roommate, Shylent Cat, in the hat that I made for Annie but she didn't like so I kept for myself. No, it doesn't really fit like that, he just didn't put it all the way on.

Our pup Malakai eating a tangerine from inside the turkey.

Malakai being cute. No, that's not a muzzle on his nose. It's called a Gentle Leader.

Malakai waiting for some scraps. He didn't have to wait long.

Happy 2008!