What we've been eating

This is just a little rundown of what we've been eating!

Meals

Recently I decided to approach meal planning a little differently. Generally I spend about an hour going through our saved meal files (yes, tedious), pick a few, narrow them down and write the grocery list. But in the last few weeks I've changed up the approach a bit. Two things have led to the change in meal planning. 1) We are trying to minimize our food waste and 2) I got an iPad through work and synced several of our magazine subscriptions with it. It's been fun to select an issue or two and pull out a few recipes to try for the week.

Last week we tried out a new pizza recipe - Goat Cheese & Asparagus pizza. A tasty and fun alternative to some of the more traditional pizzas.

This past weekend we made the cover recipe from Bon Appetit - chicken khao soi. We pretty much followed the recipe exactly and it turned out really well. Next time I think I would change a few things to try to reduce the fat content (chicken breast instead of thigh, low fat coconut milk). This made for a great work week recipe because it was easy to reheat and we each could customize it based on our likes.

We also made the stuffed cabbage recipe from Smitten Kitchen and roasted some fingerling potatoes as a side. It took me about an hour to prep the entire meal and then another hour to cook but the recipe is easy, simple, and cheap. Oh, and really yummy.

Desserts

I tried two more recipes from the Good to the Grain cookbook I got two Christmas' ago from my SIL and BIL. The first recipe, Sand cookies, used Kamut flour. Yeah, I had no idea either until I raided the Bob's Red Mill section at our local grocery store and found it. The cookies only have four ingredients: Kamut flour, powdered sugar, salt and high quality unsalted butter. They are seriously amazing and super easy to make.

The second cookie recipe I whipped together for a last minute dinner with neighbors. It was a simple chocolate chip recipe made entirely with whole wheat flour. Also quite tasty and no one knew they were made with whole wheat flour! I added a little smoked sea salt to the tops of the second batch - yummy!

I apparently was not great at taking pictures of all of this. Oh well!

Cooking together

We often 'celebrate' things by cooking together. Early in our first year of marriage we agreed to keep the gifts we give each other to a minimum. While giving and receiving gifts is fun, we usually stick to exchanging cards and cooking a meal together. Cooking can be a great way to spend time together or it can be terrible. Just in time for Valentine's Day, A Couple Cooks wrote a post with helpful tips on cooking together. Several of the tips stood out to me as challenges we've faced and moved past (most of the time).

I am notoriously over-ambitious in the meal-planning area, especially when we're planning a "fancier" meal than our everyday stuff. Often this would result in a scenario where dinner would be later than I wanted and I would be hungry and really stressed. This is not a fun way to cook. Over the last couple of years I've working on keeping myself in check during the planning process.

Part of this process has been deciding to slow down and allow myself more time to cook. Feeling rushed (usually by my need to get things done 'on time') is unnecessarily stress-inducing. This change alone has made the times I cook so much more enjoyable.

While we aren't perfect at the meal planning and cooking thing, we have really gotten to a place where it is far more enjoyable - allowing us to really enjoy the gift of cooking together. Now if only I could get the husband to clean as we cook (best-ever advice from my mom and echoed in the blog post I mentioned above).

With that in mind we decided to make lobster ravioli for our Valentine's celebration. The husband is great at making pasta so we knew what to expect with that part of the meal. I also opted for a relatively simple dessert that I could prep ahead of time.

We knew that the husband would be working on Friday and that we wouldn't get started on pasta making until he got home. This meant that we would eat later. I made sure that we had a snack on hand to compensate for our later dinner time.

We did not have a side to the meal and kept it simple with just the lobster ravioli. Four raviolis were plenty of food and included some veggies! :) We modified this recipe for the lobster filling and it turned out really well. We did not use lentils or crab meat. The husband insists on non-pasteurized crab meat and it was really expensive so we compensated with more lobster (it was on sale)!

My grandmother was awesome and tracked down a recipe for the sauce. She had lobster ravioli at Violino Ristorante Italiano and loved the sauce. She called the restaurant and the owner/chef kindly provided her the recipe for the sauce!

Lemon Sauce a la Violino Risterante

Pour 1 glass (I would imagine that to be about 1 cup) white wine into sauce pan. Add a pinch or so Rosemary. Reduce slightly. Zest 1 lemon, keeping for later, and add juice from lemon to pan. Add 1/2 cup of heavy cream and 1/4 cup of butter. Salt and Pepper to taste. Pour sauce over dish and sprinkle with lemon zest and grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

We completed the meal with Milk Chocolate Souffles with Nougat Whip. While the recipe had really great reviews it wasn't my favorite. The nougat whip was pretty good but I didn't think the souffle had enough flavor. I prefer the Cooking Light souffles I made a few years ago (and you can freeze those). Oh well!

We really enjoyed our dinner and the time cooking together. It made for the perfect celebration!

Cupcakes

One of the best things about finishing school has been the freedom I have now. When I see a fun recipe, like this one for turtle cupcakes from Annie's Eats, I can make it that weekend without thinking twice about how I'm spending my time. It's awesome!

I did in fact see this recipe last week and decided to make them Saturday. Having never filled cupcakes before I was curious about the process. All in all it went really well.

I used a pairing knife to cut out little holes in each cupcake.

Then I filled them with a little caramel-pecan mixture (yummy).

Then I replaced the cutout piece (minus a bit of it), iced the cupcakes with caramel buttercream and finally drizzled each cupcake with ganache and more caramel. Tasty!

I didn't change the recipe at all but I didn't have enough caramel leftover to drizzle the tops. No worries though, I didn't mind making an extra batch of caramel, especially when it means a jar of leftover caramel - that stuff is so tasty.

The last piece

One of the first projects we tackled in the new year was the final piece of our pantry make-over. While there are still a few organizing things remaining, the last major addition to the pantry was a spice rack. Our spices truly were getting the best of us and when I really thought about it, so were our oils and vinegars.

I either had to grab a chair to reach an oil or vinegar I needed or we bought more thinking we had run out when all along we had a perfectly good bottle of ____ vinegar (or oil) hiding in the back of the shelf. I think we have 4 bottles of apple cider vinegar for this exact reason.

And the spices numbered so many that they were overflowing into an extremely unorganized mess on the bottom shelves of another cabinet.

While having the spices and oils/vinegars right next to the stove is helpful, our pantry door is essentially right next to the stove when open. So we had no issue rethinking our kitchen organization and moving those items to the pantry.

When we looked at the door we decided building two separate units would be the best solution and the husband got to work on it one Saturday morning. It took him a few hours to build both racks and install them. I opted to leave them unfinished. I thought the stain we used for the shelves would be too dark and I hate painting so...unfinished they stay! :)

In the next picture you can see our new spice bottles. We buy a lot of spices in the bulk food section of the grocery store and needed bottles that would keep them fresh. We searched a number of places (Ikea, Container Store, World Market, etc) but had a difficult time finding containers that had a quality seal. Our search ended when I found these bottles. Woo-hoo!

Halloween treats for the office

Often times, office parties are pretty stale when it comes to the food and decor. When we decided on the Halloween theme for our party, I knew I wanted to make it a little more fun by having a few theme-related treats and decor. I also knew that I didn't want to spend a ton of time on a work party! :)

For the food, I decided on chocolate covered pretzels,

pumpkin rice krispie treats,

and witches hats.

 

I made the pretzels ahead of time, knowing they would be fine for quite awhile after I made them. The night before the party, I made the pumpkins and put together the hats in about an hour and a half.

I also found a cute veggie tray idea that my coworker created for the party.

And instead of buying decorations or making something, I brought a few Halloween/fall related items that I already had. It added a nice touch without adding any time!

The party turned out to be pretty fun!

Halloween treats

My office is having a little get together Wednesday and our team is hosting it. We decided to go with a Halloween theme. I love Halloween and if it didn't completely embarrass the husband, I would go the route of Claire from Modern Family! :)

After deciding on our party theme, I searched the interwebs for a bit and found a ton of fun Halloween goodies. I searched for simple snacks that I could easily make after work and ran a few of them by the husband. I told him that I had ruled out ghost meringues and he suggested I make them for us, so I did!

They were easy to make until I tried sticking the mini chocolate chips on - those things are teeny and not so easy to stick on to tons of little meringue mounds! Oh well. They turned out well though and are cute if you need a fairly easy (though pretty time-consuming) little Halloween treat!

You have to eat

This blog is slowly becoming a food and travel blog. Hmm. Well I hope we have more going on in life soon but for now this is what you get! :)

Despite our ridiculous schedule and traveling and writing and working, we do still have to eat. And we continue to be silly and take pictures of said food. So that's really all I have to share with you right now. I know, sad.

Here's what we've been eating:

Shrimp and Grits based on a Cooking Light recipe.

Whole wheat orzo with grilled chicken and peaches, and sauteed green beans - based on this recipe from BHG but we charred the green beans in a skillet instead.

Quinoa with red onion, sweet potato and kale, topped with scallops based on this recipe from Real Simple.

We've made a lot of pizzas lately b/c they're super easy and fast and a great way to clean out the fridge.

• Pizza with corn, hatch chiles and bacon
• Baked potato pizza
• Pizza with bbq sauce, red onion, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and spicy sausage

Potato pizza - actually really yummy

Red onion, broccoli, cherry tomatoes and spicy sausage

Vietnamese yumminess

The husband and I love Vietnamese food and one of the (sometimes few) nice things about Houston is that we have access to a lot of great Vietnamese restaurants. We've tried a handful of recipes at home thanks to some great cookbooks but have mostly focused on stir-fries and noodle dishes like bun (rice noodles with pork and fresh veggies).

We actually had some extra time (whoa) last weekend so we decided to try our hand at spring rolls. Per our usual team work, I was on ingredient duty and the husband was on rolling duty. He did a great job and the rolls were awesome. They weren't hard to make and were a fun way to hang out one evening.

Our work station

The spring rolls (or summer rolls)

 

Our fried rolls with nuoc cham

Our homemade nuoc cham

We used a mix of information from WhiteonRiceCouple to make our pickled carrots and spring rolls. We took the nuoc cham recipe and fried roll recipe from our trusty Vietnamese cookbook, Hot Sour Salty Sweet, which I talked about here.

What we've been eating

I love the spring and summer because of the abundance of good quality, in-season produce. We tend to eat a ton of veggies during this time, planning our meals around the various quality vegetables that we grow or purchase. Every once in awhile, I will pick a new interesting-looking recipe for a meat and throw that in too. Here's what we've been eating lately (including a dessert at the very bottom):

Lamb burgers with mint pesto and baked sweet potato fries.

Our take: The lamb burgers were fabulous (to us) and the mint pesto was terrific. We ground the lamb from a boneless leg of lamb we bought at Costco. We cut the oil down tremendously in the mint pesto to cut the fat and honestly, it didn't need it. The baked sweet potato fries are not magic like the blog post says but after cooking them twice as long as the recommended time, they turned out crispier than most.

Grilled zucchini tacos

Our take: I love these and they were so simple for us because we already had homemade roasted tomatillo salsa in the freezer. The corn succotash is really tasty and the leftovers work well on all kinds of tacos (we added it later to grilled fish tacos) and breakfast burritos.

 
Grilled cedar plank salmon

Our take: Easy and a great simple dish. The husband seasoned the salmon here with dill and lemon. We pair this with whatever vegetable we have on hand, and if the veggie is good grilled, even better!

Grilled Hawaiian chicken kebabs

Our take: A nice change of pace as we usually do not eat a lot of fruit and grilled pineapple is amazing. The marinade was pretty good but didn't leave a lasting flavor - we doubled it and I saved some to spoon over the brown rice and grilled veggies which definitely boosted the end flavor.

 

 Pesto Orzo with roasted tomatoes and grilled fish

Our take: This is one of our recent go-to's. Such an easy weekday dinner, made even easier by our stash of frozen homemade pesto. 

Spicy potato and black bean burritos

Our take: We made quite a bit of this a few weeks back and it was great. The husband even liked it (without the beans of course). We didn't make burritos with it but instead used it as a taco filler in whole wheat tortillas. It was an easy meal to reheat and tasted especially good with avocado on top.

Lemon blueberry cake loaf

Our take: This is a nice change of pace for dessert with a surprisingly light fresh taste. The husband and I were both concerned about the sweetness with the icing but the cake is not very sweet so it worked out well. Both the cake and icing are very easy to make and do not require a ton of ingredients. I substituted almond milk for the milk in the cake and in the icing without any issue.

Olympics fun

I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. This year, our friends Jennifer and Brett hosted an Olympic opening ceremony party. This will likely be the last (and only year) I watch the opening ceremony. Despite the somewhat strange and overly long ceremony, we had a lot of fun hanging out.

In keeping with an American themed dinner, I made s'mores cupcakes! I searched the web for recipes and decided on a version from Eats Well With Others, who adapted a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers, Annie's Eats.

I chose this recipe because it combined a graham cracker base with homemade chocolate cake and marshmallow icing! Yum!

 
The cupcakes turned out really well. I might add a tad more graham cracker to make the crust a little more substantial but other than that they were perfect. The recipe made extra batter and icing so I made a few additional cupcakes.

Becoming adults

Why is it that when you get a dining room table you feel like you're one step closer to being an adult?

 

Regardless, we are making one step toward adulthood with the recent purchase of a dining room table. Yay! It was quite the ordeal to find a table the husband liked but we finally did! We ordered the table from Crate and Barrel several months ago, had a defective one delivered and returned and finally received our new table a few weekends ago. 

We have a lot of decorating left to do in the room so please disregard the similar look of the table and flooring!

We had the table one day before we traveled to North Carolina so our first chance to use it came this past Sunday. You can see a glimpse of the chairs we bought for it. I'll update with those later!

Dinner was grilled mahi mahi and tomatoes atop whole wheat orzo with pesto.

The swing of things

It feels like we're finally getting back into the swing of things. Of course some adjustment is expected when coming back from a two week vacation only to go out of town the following weekend but things were a little out of whack well before our vacation. We've both been very busy with work but we're finally getting to a point where working late only occurs once (or twice) a week. Hopefully things will continue to slow down on that front.

Although still cute, the dogs have also been somewhat out of sorts as well. Shadow's heart murmur continues to be a source of concern for us. Usually we can count on Gracie to be her moody but loveable self, however, she has also had some issues recently. As a result, we switched vets last week and Gracie was the first up for a visit. She had crystals in her urine and we're hoping after some prescription food for the next four weeks, these will disappear. Worst case scenario is that she has kidney stones and needs surgery. So we're keeping our fingers crossed on that one. Shadow is up for a visit Friday and I'm hoping we get some helpful information about her heart murmur. 

Other than that, for the first time in a long while we had time to do some cooking this past weekend. The husband broke out the smoker and smoked ribs and a pork butt. I tried my hand at a homemade ice cream recipe that was an epic fail. The base of the ice cream was mascarpone which was a little weird so that could have been the reason we didn't like it, but who knows!. The chocolate sauce that went with it was quite tasty though so we got something out of the try!

 

 

And of course we've been enjoying lots of tomatoes from the garden!  We've had pest issues with some of our other plants and found a newcomer among the parsley plants - big ole vicious caterpillars. But aside from those, the garden stuff is going well. The season is about to end here for tomatoes and we'll be sad to see that happen but we'll start working on the fall/winter seeds soon!

The daily stuff

Blogging about Europe will take some time and unfortunately, I don't seem to have much of that these days. I'm behind on everything!! The hair balls or dust bunnies or whatever will attest to that! Why you ask?

For one, we flew to NYC for a wedding this past weekend - yes, less than a week after we got back from Europe. We only took two photos and they were of our lunch before the wedding. Oh well. The lunch was really good - check out Cafe Habana if you're ever there. We had fish tacos and grilled corn Cuban style (with mayo, cheese, cayenne pepper sprinkled with fresh lime juice) and both were amazing.

We've also been quite busy trying to maintain our ridiculous tomato garden. The rest of the garden has been pretty low maintenance which I'll update about later. But we've had a new pest problem with the tomatoes - leaf footed bugs (a lot like stink bugs). Every day after work we have to go to the garden and look for the baby and adult bugs and kill them. They are seriously a pain in the rear.

Regardless of the pest issue, we have TONS of tomatoes. We've given away at least a couple of pounds,

and we've eaten a couple of pounds too.

Plain tomatoes and caprese salad.

And pizza (with pesto made with basil from the garden).

We got a wine shipment from our wine club and enjoyed it with our pizza.

OH and then there are the ones in the fridge right now (I know that tomatoes lose flavor in the fridge but home grown tomatoes in the fridge still taste a heck of a lot better than store bought ones and this way we can eat them before they go bad).

Good thing we love some home grown tomatoes!! :)