We've been terrible about keeping this updated. But why should that be any different than the rest of this blog's existence? But we've found it easier to take pictures on our phones and upload them to google+. And so goeth the way of technology. Eventually I'll get those over here too I suppose.
But here are some pictures on the memory card since that delectable souffle:
Grilled pork chops, kale & brussel sprouts (Jake probably gets credit for this one)
Sasuage and corn and cilantro oh my! (Definitely a Jake dish)
Beet salad. (Me of course!)
Parboiled artichokes preparing to be grilled
Swordfish ala oh my my god
This swordfish had to GET IN M MOUTH
The final grilled Artichoke - I made a tarragon garlic lemon compound butter to dip my leaf meat into and the dipping it was good. While Jake manned the actual grill I think I get the credit for this meal.
This baked chicken is all Jake.
late night nacho snack anyone? Yes I had to make the chips first because that's how I roll. (hey, when one wants nachos one wants nachos!)
So I did this thing where I made ribs. The pork at the Amish market made me buy it. (I think I took some raw pictures on my phone) it was so beautiful one would think it was beef if they didn't know any better. I put a rub on it for a bunch of hours, and then a marinade, and then set up a water circulator on the grill and we cooked it for maybe six hours.
ribs demanded some friends so it'd be a party. We invited corn and kale to hang out and keep ribs company.
The pictures don't really capture how tender the meat was and totally falling off the bone, yet not overcooked at all. I get ALLL the credit for the ribs in case anyone was wondering.
a quick sunday breakfast of rib eye, poached eggs and hollandaise. (maybe 20 minutes from start to finish?)
I did this thing where I sliced up a caulflower and marinated it in olive oil, red wine, and garlic pepper for a couple of hours. Then I stuck it in the oven for about twenty minutes, then added paremsean and broiled it until it melted and it was good.
leftover chicken wanted to be salad for a Saturday lunch! In the above picture it's found itself stuffed into a pickled cherry pepper.
I love green beans. I love fresh green beans from the Amish market. I do not love that they sell them by the gallon and we cannot eat that many green beans weekly. I do love tossing them in some siracha and garlic powder and throwing them in the dehydrator overnight. All of a sudden it's impossible to have too many green beans.
This is .. what did I call it again. My take on a mediterranean binh mah. Because obviously. It's sort of making my mouth water looking at the picture and I'm sad that I don't really remember what I did to create this delectable concoction of awesome. I do know it was Amish ground turkey! Among you know, other things. Totally worth the effort that went into it. The problem is even when we're full, the food is so good that we get seconds. This was one of those dishes that made us eat more against our wills.
more roasted beets. This time with it's friends roasted kale and green beans. Because a roasted salad is where it's at.
My cauliflower brings all the boys to the yard.
Okay, also the kale and tofu. The components didn't really all go together on the plate, but they really were all delicious in the mouth.
What is this even?
OH RIGHT. My stuffed eggplant. This was a surprising success. I don't enjoy ground beef but I had purchased a frack ton of it in case we wanted to cook something when we had a bunch of guests. (we cooked a rib roast instead) So I had to come up with a bunch of things to do with it. The mouth (and eye) was sure that this was just full of ground beef when it really wasn't. I just did that thing I do of capturing lots of meat flavor in the vegetables.
Mostly though, I just had to make stuffed eggplant because I'd been playing far too much of the game "Don't Starve" and stuffed eggplant gets made regularly in my gameplay style. I don't think I'd even ever made stuffed eggplant before. And I'm still trying to cook eggplant and zucchini well enough that Jake likes it. (I've recently made a lot of progress on the zucchini though)
Stuffed peppers. Quinoa stuffed poblanos. And beans, and onions, and peppers (yes peppers in peppers) and garlic and cheese and mmm. I'm not a fan of rice stuffed peppers but I still want to put things in them and bake them. The quinoa worked well. I cooked it a bit weird so I didn't love the flavor of it separately but it did it's job in the pepper.
One interesting thing with this dish - I typically hate making everything from scratch for this sort of cooking (okay most cooking) because it's too much time. The secret to weekday eating is creative use of leftovers and I'd prefer to have all the individual pieces already prepared. However ... since we didn't have any of the individual pieces, I made extra of every individual component so we then would have the extras. And it totally worked, almost all of it got cooked later. See below!
Jake found the ingredients in the refrigerator very inspiring and made what he called "deconstructed chimichangas" I personally found them pretty weird and he used way too much ground beef. (from leftover hamburgers from the aforementioned too much ground beef that I had purchased.) Points for creative use of the leftover item. Also he gets points for loving it. HE also weirdly mixed beets in with the beef and quinoa. That I didn't get. They were my least successful beets this year so he could do whatever he wanted with them in my opinion.
A few days later Jake decided to try chimichangas again, but this time more constructed ... and baked. I had made a zucchini appetizer (ie I was starving and since dinner looked nowhere near being started decided I had to eat something) and he wanted to apply the principle from my zucchini to the tortilla. So he brushed it with an egg wash and then dusted it with seasoned (cayenne) flour. It did successfully create a crispy shell and was fun to eat. However it was still too much of that meh mush inside that I didn't love the first time around. Again though, interesting cooking experiement. and I think I did eat all of mine so I can't really complain.
So the zucchini was too old and tasted kind of like pumpkin. Then the tomatoes while good I should have peeled. The sausage was okay and the feta was way too goaty. I don't know. Also, I made the mistake of eating all the leftover tomatoes and zuchnni for lunch the next day and stupidly drinking the cup of olive oil at the bottom of my dish before I realized what I was doing (the garlic! The garlic was so good!) and I made myself fairly ill. So ill I can still taste it and this was a month ago. ugh.
We're almost to the present day! This was just last week! Maybe even last Friday? I already cannot remember.
Go go Tofu!
I still don't love tofu. It's the texture. But I'm not giving up on it, I feel sure I can do it. This I think would have been very successful if the grill had been hot. I pressed it for a bit then created a marinade of soy, ginger, garlic, uh, how do I already forget what else? lime juice. poured it over the tofu and let then prepared the rest of the food while it sat it its juice.
The rest mostly just means pickling some onions and peppers, making a lime siracha sour cream, and oh, of course the kale to grill. cutting up an avocado and some tomatoes.
The weird thing about that tofu? If your mouth was texture stupid, you would swear it was barbeque chicken. I'm not sure how it turned into barbeque chicken. But it did. Strange food, you're strange.
This was my half hour brunch Sunday. Parboiled potatoes while sauteeing onions and the last long mystery pepper (I just buy peppers at the farmer's markets and let it be a surprise as to what they taste like, these were sweet with just a touch of spice and possibly some of the best peppers ever for generic cooking) threw the potatoes in, added some chard, did the eggs, then broiled for six minutes and voila! Food!
