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Holy crap people. Has it really been a month since I've shown my face around here? What on earth have a been doing? There was a week-long visit from the mother-in-law, a week of books taking precedence over computers, a week where I thought I was going to die from a series of maladies all plaguing me at once, and somehow, now here we are a month later. Ooops.
I haven't been working on much anyway. I do have one finished project to show you and a couple of things in progress. There are two quilts I need to get started on asap for weddings both less than a month away (yikes!!). And I have a huge stack of library books that I'm still reading my way through. So, you know.
"But what about this delicious something for me to make and eat?" you ask. I'm about to tell you. It is a minestrone soup. A soup I've made every week for about a month now. We've been eating it for lunch basically every day and we love it (even William!) It was originally based on a recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, but I've made so many alterations that it's really my own now. So here you go!
Cara's MINESTRONE (or, as William calls it, Rocket Soup)
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, finely diced
1 leek, finely diced (I only have made it with a leek once. It's good, but optional)
4 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 head of cabbage, roughly chopped into bite-size pieces
1 potato, peeled and diced (I also have used a parsnip, which was really good)
8 cups vegetable stock
2 tablespoons tomato paste
5 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
salt, to taste
15 oz red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
15 oz white kidney beans (or Great Northern), drained and rinsed
15 oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes (I get this from Trader Joe's and it's amazing -- it's tomatoes and green chilis. If you don't want a spicy soup, just use regular canned diced tomatoes)
1 1/2 teaspoons cider vinegar(the "secret" ingredient that I think totally makes it!)
freshly grated Parmesan, for garnish
optional: Italian sausage, cooked and cut into bite-sized pieces
Heat olive oil over med-high in a large pot. Add garlic, onions, carrot and leek and cook until veg start to become tender (10 minutes, covered, stirring occasionally). Add cabbage, potato, stock and tomato paste and turn heat to high. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and add 2 tablespoons of parsley along with the oregano, basil, salt and pepper. Simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes.
Add beans, tomatoes and cider vinegar. Simmer until all veg are tender. Adjust seasonings and add sausage if desired. Stir in remaining 3 tablespoons of parsley before serving. Serve with Parmesan.
(You can also add pasta to this at the end. Add a few ounces of a small pasta before adding the sausage and simmer until pasta is cooked. We leave out the sausage and pasta generally to reduce calories.)
This recipe yields 6-8 servings and is only between 200-300 calories per serving (without sausage or pasta)! It makes for a tasty, quick, healthy, filling-but-not-heavy lunch. And, like all soups, I like this more the day after it's made. All the flavors really come out and blend.
I will be sad when these veggies go out of season (they've all been coming in our CSA box), but will be just that much more excited to make it next winter! That is the joy of eating seasonally -- you're not likely to burn out if you can only have them at certain foods at certain times of the year! It really makes you not take anything for granted, too. Which is a lesson we all need to learn. :)
P.S. Sorry about the lack of a photo! You'll just have to make this yourself so you can see it. :)
EDIT: Got a photo finally! Doesn't it look delicious??
We had some friends over for dinner a few weeks ago. They brought us some Meyer lemons from their trees and some honey from their bees! It's my favorite EVER to get homemade/homegrown/handmade anything! It's really the greatest. Almost as great as having friends over for dinner.
I used both the honey and the lemon in tea. And then I ate more bread than I should have as a vehicle for the honey. And then I found this recipe for Meyer Lemon Curd and immediately whipped some up. And HOLY CRAP. That stuff should be illegal. I also baked some biscuits (my first, sad attempt at biscuits) to eat the lemon curd upon. Luckily, I gave most of the biscuits and lemon curd away to friends, but still ended up eating way too much of it myself. The curd was especially amazing on top of vanilla ice cream. And just by itself by the spoonful. I do love me anything lemon flavored.
So anyway, if you are here in So Cal where Meyer lemons are just dropping off trees all over the place, make some of this ASAP. And if you are some place else, find some Meyer lemons that have no doubt travelled 1 thousand + miles, and make some ASAP.
Curd is one of the sickest words ever. Good thing the deliciousness of the product makes up for it.
My favorite recipe site is this here Simply Recipes. I have tried several recipes and they've all been incredble (like this baby artichokes one). I am a fan. It's the first place I go when I'm looking for a recipe now. The photography is beautiful and the little bloggity posts that go along are so fun to read and usually have all kinds of information.
Photo from Simply Recipes
And anyway, the other day I was browsing around for cabbage recipes and instead I found this recipe for Braised Beef Short Ribs. I knew I had to try them. One of our favorite dishes at our favorite new Northern UT restaurant is braised short ribs so it'd be quite convenient to be able to make such a dish at home, right? That's exactly what I was thinking. And I was correct.
So, friends were invited and the two day process was completed and then the food was consumed and it was all good. All of it. The company, the process and the food. I served the ribs with sauteed cabbage and mashed potatoes and biscuits. There are a couple of things I'll do differently next time (like, mine didn't look at all like those in that photo up there and I'm not quite sure why yet) but overall I was quite pleased and can't wait to make them again.
Speaking of biscuits, I'm attempting to master them. I come from a long line of supreme biscuit and pie makers. I must say, I've got the pie thing down, but biscuits are another story. I even Skyped with my Mom the other day so that we could make them together and she could teach me all the secrets. I've made them twice now and they aren't quite there yet. Dang. Guess I'll just have to keep trying? What a horrible fate.
iPhone pic of attempt #1. Not too bad.
So anyway, get ye hence to the butcher and pick up some short ribs and make these and enjoy.
Well, seeing as how we're not the green-beer-swilling-type, I instead just finished eating a lot of food. Irish food. Or, what Americans think is Irish food, anyway. I don't know how accurate it is but I do know that it is delicious.
The feast was gobbled up before I was able to take any photos but it consisted of:
Corned Beef
Boiled Cabbage
Roasted Potatoes
Roasted Asparagus
Sparkling Limeade
Cupcakes
It was pretty incredible, if I do say so myself. Also, I think St. Patrick's Day may be my favorite holiday as the entire meal took about 15 minutes total of my actual time. The rest of the time it just tended to itself. That just doesn't happen with Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas foods. They are all so much more time consuming what with the grating, stirring, rising, rolling out, etc.
Also, a word about the cupcakes. This morning I woke up really wanting to bake. I love baking but can only do it occasionally -- only when I'm able to spread the calories around to other people rather than ingesting them all myself.
I found the cupcake recipe on a food blog I love, Whipped. They are POM Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. POM as in POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice. The POM juice actually replaces the butter and eggs that would normally be in a cupcake batter. Vegan! (Just don't mind the frosting -- definitely not vegan.) So I had to try them.
But, upon first taste out of the oven, I was pretty disappointed. They didn't seem very moist, the tops got hard/crispy and they did not want to come out of the cupcake liners without a struggle. However, I couldn't imagine throwing out 30 cupcakes. So, I frosted them with some green-tinted cream cheese icing, dressed them up with a peppermint leaf from the garden (woot!) and distributed them among our friends. Feeling just a little bit reluctant. I do not want to be known for dry cupcakes.
However, it seems that a combination of Refrigeration and Time worked some magic and by the time I tried another one after dinner -- moist! soft! no struggle! It was really pretty great. Mostly the cream cheese frosting could make anything edible, but they were pretty good after all.
I don't know that I'll make these particular cupcakes again -- they weren't the best ever -- but they were definitely worth eating. :) I don't know what I could have done to make them turn out differently. If you happen to try this recipe, please report back with your results!
So, Happy St. Patty's day everyone and HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY to my sister Bethany! (I ate a cupcake, or two, in your honor, Beth.)
We had chicken salad croissant sandwiches for dinner. Yum. They were good. I could eat them all day. I don't remember where I got this recipe. I've had it forever but only made it a couple times. I will be making it more often, however. I have changed a few things from the original recipe and have it for you here. Did I mention, yum?
Chicken Salad
1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, halved
2 apples, peeled and chopped (or, about 1/2 cup red grapes, halved)
2 stalks celery, diced
1 tablespoon green onion, chopped
2/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
a couple grinds fresh black pepper
In a large skillet, pour 1 inch deep water and bring to
a bare simmer. Add chicken breasts. Gently poach until
internal temperature reaches 170 degrees, 8-10 minutes.
Remove chicken, let cool 5 minutes. Cut chicken into
small pieces.
In large bowl toss apples, celery and green onion. In a
small bowl whisk together mayonnaise, mustard, salt and
pepper until well blended.
In a small skillet, toast curry powder over high heat,
about 2 minutes. Stir curry into mayonnaise mixture.
Add chicken and mayonnaise mixture to apples, celery
and green onions. Fold together with a rubber spatula.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to chill
and allow flavors to blend.
Serve on a bed of lettuce or on croissants as a sandwich.
Also, one of my best friends from Back In The Day, Kaja, just posted this recipe for No-Bake Cookies on her blog today. Heavens I hadn't had them in many a year, so of course I had to make some. I wonder if they're just like, a Utah thing. No one I've talked to here has ever heard of them.
No-Bake Cookies
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups quick oats
Bring first 4 ingredients to a boil in a large saucepan, for one minute.
Remove from heat and add peanut butter and vanilla. Fold in oats.
Scoop out onto wax paper and allow to set.
I like to put mine in the freezer! Yum! And kind of weird!
Well, dinner last night was good...but not mind-blowing or anything. I expected more from Martha. She really let me down this time. The menu consisted of Hamburgers topped with pancetta and fontina cheese; balsamic mushrooms; bean, basil and tomato salad; and fruit. It was fun though, as always!
I have another recipe for ya'll. This is, in my opinion, the best guacamole in the land. It's my version of a recipe from my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook. It's the perfect blend of flavors with a tiny hint of spicy.
Cara's Favorite Guacamole
2 jalapeno peppers
2 large, ripe avocados
2 T lemon juice, fresh squeezed
2 T cilantro, extremely finely chopped
1/2 t salt
dash of freshly ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
2 medium tomatoes, chopped into 1/2" pieces
1/4 of a red onion, very finely chopped
Remove stem, seeds and membranes from peppers; chop.
Mash avocados. Mix all ingredients. Cover and refrigerate
1 hour to blend flavors
I hadn't even eaten avocado in my life before like 2 years ago (they don't have such things in UT). And now I'm addicted to avocado and guacamole.
Today we put William in the pool for the first time. He was very unsure about it at first but once I showed him that he could splash like in the bathtub he was stoked.
It's too hot to do anything.
I've eaten about 12 cookies today.
I just had to write and share my excitement. It's COLD outside, people. Now, understand that by "cold" I mean "under 70 degrees". The fact is, it's 68 degrees. I know that in most parts of the world, 68 degrees is nowhere near cold but to me, here in this land of fiery temperatures for 98% of the year, it's downright chilly.
Evidence: I had to wear a jacket when I went for my hair appointment.
Conclusion: It is chilly.
This thrills me to no end. There are LEAVES on the GROUND, thanks to the breeze. I have all the windows open and...I am not sweating. That is definitely news worthy considering I've been a sweaty, gigantic walrus for the past several months.
Also, the google weather thingy says it might rain. It's blue-skied and sunny right now, but there are some fluffy clouds around the edges so...maybe?? I do hope so.
I made Bean and Bacon Soup (from Real Simple February 2005) last night for dinner. I've been making it for a couple of years now and it's absolutely my favorite -- with a big chunk of sourdough bread to dip in it. I always make a double batch and then freeze what we don't eat the first night -- this way we have 3-4 two person meals ready to go. And this is a soup that's always better the next day or two weeks later. It is so so good.
I want to make an apple pie right now. And wear boots and tights and a sweater. And go on a hay ride and rake some leaves. And then sit by a fire this evening and drink a hot beverage. With my family. I miss my family.
At least my mom is coming tomorrow! We pick her up from the airport at noon and I'm counting down the hours. This is only the second time she's ever come to visit while we've lived here so it's very exciting.
I have a couple of projects to finish but I'm not feeling very motivated. I need to sew two birthday presents for next month so that I don't have to worry about it then. At least the cutting is done. I DESPISE the measuring and cutting part of any sewing project. If I were rich I'd hire someone to do it for me, cause seriously, it drives me insane.
Alright, this is turning into a bunch of rambling. But I just had to share the good news -- 68 degrees! I'm going to go sew for a bit and then lay on the couch for a bit, now. Hopefully we're going to go see The Darjeeling Limited tonight -- but it's only playing in Santa Monica and Century City, so we'll see if I'm feeling up to the drive tonight. It'll most likely be our last childless Friday night and the last movie we go to for awhile so...we've got to live it up!
Have a fabulous weekend my friends! Hope it's fallish where you are.
