Out of Town

Sorry that I haven't been posting.  I have been out of town.  First I was off to the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet festival.  Yes I am 26, and I have been knitting for years.  I first learned when I was in the 5th grade but I didn't really keep up with it until after high school.  The week after I graduated, we went to California to spend some time with my mom's family.  The aunt that I was staying with knits and while we were there she retaught me and taught my sister.  I knit all through college.  And since moving to my current home outside of Washington DC I have meant a great group of friends who knit.  A few of us girls went to Pittsburgh.  We took some classes, bought some yarn and fluff (I also spin yarn) and just had a general girls weekend.

After spending the weekend in Pittsburgh, I went up to Erie, Pennsylvania.  I went to college and we there originally to talk to some students on campus.  While there I met up with my old professors and caught up with some old friends.  I had a great time.



But now is it back to work and back to cooking.  The next few weeks, my meals will be from sources online rather than from my cookbooks.   I am moving sometime in the near future and I have already started packing, including the cookbooks.

Here is the menu for this week:

Thai One On - Five Ingredient Crockpot Dinner from Whats Cookin' with Mary
Crustless Quinoa Quiche from Talis Tomatoes
Pork Loin ROast with Caramelised Apple, Spinach & Horseradish Cream from Eat Drink Paleo

Trail Mix/ Pantry Clean up

I was working on cleaning out my pantry  I knew I had a lot of nuts and seeds thought why not make some trail mix.

I roasted the nuts and seeds with a little bit of salt in the oven at 400 for about 10 minutes.

Roasted Nuts and Seeds

I also had some oats and I know that some trail mix has those oat clusters that you find in granola or in cereal.  I tried to find a recipe online.  This version was made by simply mixing the oats with some honey and then baking.  For me they didn't really hold their shape.  The honey did add some sweetness.  But it didn't add much crunch.

 

Oat Clusters

 

I cut up some apricots and mixed it with raisins and dried cherries.  I added some chocolate chips and tossed everything together.

Trail Mix

Jerk Pork Tenderloin with Pineapple and Jicama Salsa

Recipe found in Food & Wine Annual Cookbook - 2011 p 166

I made this tenderloin on Sunday. I started marinating the pork Sunday morning.  The marinade was very easy to make.  Simply throw all of the ingredients into the blender.  The one change I made was that I cut up the fresh ginger into smaller pieces before putting into the blender.  I just know that my blender wasn't able to chop up the single large piece into smaller pieces.

Pork Tenderloin in the marinade

 

The pineapple salsa was very simple to make.  Chop and drop.  Stir at the end.  I really like the texture that the jicama adds. The ripe pineapple brings in the sweetness, the jalapeño add some spice.  I may have to make this more often.  I think it would also pair great with some grilled chicken during the summer.

 

Pineapple-Jicama Salsa

 The pork was simply grilled after being marinated for several hours.  Very tasty.

Just off the grill

Chicken Curry with Squash

Recipe found in Food and Wine Annual Cookbook 2010 p 114

I know that if I cook on the weekend, I can eat left overs the rest of the week.  I have noticed when I plan to cook on the weekend it often leads to healthier meals.  This way I plan to include vegetables.  This meal comes with the vegetables already in the dish.  I just paired it with some brown rice.

Chicken curry cooling on the stove

 The meal was very simple to make.  Saute the onions, garlic, chiles and ginger.  Season with curry and turmeric.  Add the chicken broth and coconut milk.  Then you start to add the vegetables to the hot broth.  First the potatoes, then cauliflower and squash.  (the recipes calls for just yellow squash but the ones at my store were a little small so I threw in a zucchini as well.)  Finally add the chicken until it pouches in the broth.

Curry paired with Brown Rice

The dish reheats well also.  I took it to work with me.  It was a delicious healthy one pot meal.  I got several compliments about it in the lunch room at work.  I am sure you could probably just leave out the chicken and use vegetable broth instead and would have a tasty vegetarian meal.

Friday Night Dinner - Vegetarian Enchiladas

A couple of things you should know about me up front:

I am an army brat.  This is important because it means I got to travel the world and try some amazing food.  And having lived in Texas for a total of 9 years, I LOVE Mexican food.

Another thing to note is that I am catholic.  This means that through out lent (the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter) I will not be eating meat on Fridays.

This particular Friday, I invited a young friend over to join me.  She is in high school and became vegetarian a few months ago.  Unfortunately she is not really into vegetables.  So I am inviting her over to join me in an effort to get her to eat some veggies.

Dinner today is Vegetarian Enchiladas.  This isn't really from a recipes.  I simply sautéed some onions, garlic, red and green bell peppers, and zucchini together.  I then mixed it with some black beans, cumin, smoked paprika, and some shredded cheese.  I rolled it in some corn tortillas.  I poured over some enchilada sauce and covered in cheese.  I baked it in the oven until heated and cheesy.

They turned out tasty and I was able to sneak in some vegetables into my friend's diet so mission accomplished.

The Goal

So here I am watching Julie & Julie and I get back to thinking about how I should work on a blog.  It will give me a chance to share with others all of the fun meals that I make.  But I don't want to just repeat what the character Julie by cooking my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year.

So what I have decided to do is simply blog the meals that I do make, whether they are from one of the cookbooks that I have or that I find online.  My online sources will probably be Pinterest and Google searches.

I am currently making an effort to return to making meals rather than relying on fast food and restaurants.  Since I live alone, I can cook only a few nights a week and then eat left overs.  I plan to blog about the meals I am making.  I hope at some point to be able to have some sort of tally on the  blog showing how many recipes I have left in each of my cookbooks.

Also, when the summer rolls around I will be cooking with the fruits and vegetables that are part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture program) from a local farm about 20 minutes from my house.  It is always interesting to find recipes that fit these new ingredients into my menus.