Shrimp Boil

I saw a photo spread of a shrimp boil (or “low country boil” as they are often called) in a Martha Stewart Living magazine years ago and, since this was before the days of Pinterest, had carefully torn it out and saved it and sworn one day I was going to do it.

So when we were meal planning for the beach trip and Anne said “Let’s do a shrimp boil!” I said “IN!!!” What better place to do it then where fresh shrimp is abundant!

Fortunately for us, Locke’s family had done them before so we decided he was going to be the head chef and then we loosely consulted another expert on all-things-Southern-cooking to refresh ourselves on the timing and order of ingredients into the pot. (I’ve always sworn I’d never use a Paula Deen recipe, but there’s an exception to every rule!)

It ended up being the yummiest, easiest, crowd-pleasing meal ever. The crab boil, listed in the Paula Deen recipe, was easy enough to find at the grocery store – it was a pack of herbs & spices basically in kind of little mesh bag like a tea bag that floated in the boiling water to flavor everything and then was easily scooped out. And then of course, we had Old Bay to put on the table to liberally shake on to everything. Using Old Bay always takes me back to Baltimore and makes me feel a teensy bit nostalgic!

Technically, if you’re going to do this authentically, you’re supposed to dump everything out on to newspapers on a table and just dig in – but since the table at our rental house looked like maybe it wouldn’t appreciate a couple pounds of steaming shrimp, corn and sausage poured on to it, we opted for bowls.  And then we indeed dug in!

Easiest recipe ever. Make it, eat it, share with happy guests.

Cook Once, Eat All Week–Recipe Review

After boasting about my kitchen adventures and fully stocked fridge, I thought it only fair that I give full disclosure how each of the recipes turned out after a week of eating.

First I have to say that I think cooking them all and putting them in the fridge sort of backfired.  I thought it would make it easier for Matt to come home from working his 3-11pm shifts and have a plethora of choices for dinners instead of having only one or two things ready and then freezing the rest to prepare as the week went on.  You know how sometimes when you’re standing in the cereal aisle with too many choices all you do is reach for the ol’ stand by of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and call it a day?

No, really, we actually both ate cereal for dinner at least once by the end of the week because we were just so over all the choices.  Note to self: too many choices all at once is not a good thing.  I think it would have worked better to have one or two options ready at a time, use those up and move to the next.  Live and learn.

But more importantly, how did they taste?

Spicy Thai Shrimp Soup

Seriously, that is an unattractive looking bowl of soup.  It looks lumpy and weird colored.

Fortunately, it was delicious.  The texture was perfect and the shrimp and sweet potatoes flavors were awesome together.  I could leave the peas out next time because that threw things off for me.  The only bad thing I’d say about this soup is that after 2 days, it freaked me out to reheat something with fish in it… so it never made it past day 2.  But, on days 1 and 2 it was delicious.  (So again, maybe not cooking all at once – this is probably the dish I would start with.)

Mini Meatloaves

The hands down favorite dish for flavor and reheat ease.  I took these for lunch and Matt ate them at night.  This would be an easy dish to recreate and freeze or to tailor by adding in other veggies or using other ground meats.  This was my favorite of all the recipes and I think it was Matt’s favorite too.  (It’d be a good dish to make for a new mom or someone who is sick too, because you can just reheat a few at a time.)

Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie

Again, this is a really ugly dish.  I’ve never made any type of Shepherd’s Pie before and I don’t really know what’s supposed to be happening here – meat with potatoes on top I guess?  Well, fortunately it turned out that this tasted really good too – it was kind of like Thanksgiving dinner all stirred up together.  If you could get past how weird looking it was, it was quite good.  I took it to lunch for 3 days in a row but I don’t think Matt ate any.  Possibly because I ate it all.

Enchiladas

“Why did the enchiladas have broccoli in them?” 

This is the question Matt texted me after eating this, and listen Self Magazine, why did the enchiladas have broccoli in them?  This dish was not a household favorite.  In fact, I threw more than half of it.  (Yup, sad story.)   I don’t really like enchiladas but Matt usually does, so I figured he’d eat them.  He wasn’t a huge fan of these.  But, I think you could keep them in this rotation if you left the broccoli out (which means cooking it separate from the red peppers or leaving the red peppers out too) and I’d probably add some shredded chicken to it (easily added by poaching and shredding while others cook.)

Vegetable & Chickpea Ragout with Penne

“It was like vegetable soup pasta sauce.”

Again, review from the peanut gallery.  And I had to agree.  This one I’ll chalk up to operator error – I didn’t follow the recipe exactly because I thought we’d rather have a saucier pasta sauce.  Maybe the actual recipe is delicious but my version of it?  Eh, not so much.  I ended up tossing the pasta sauce half way through the week, pouring the penne into a casserole dish and added a can of boring old Ragu and a few spoonful's of Ricotta cheese, sprinkling with mozzarella and turning it into baked ziti…. to which the peanut gallery proclaimed, “Now, this is the kind of Italian I can get on board with.”  So, we salvaged that one.

Some hits, some misses and some learning experiences.  I do intend to try and do this a little more often because it was great to have an entire week without any weeknight cooking duties yet still have homemade meals available.  I don’t know if I’ll revisit this rotation for awhile, simply because there were so many other recipe collections I found like when I was searching.  Let me know if you try this one set of recipes (or any other one) – I’ll be curious to know how other people fare with them!

Cook Once, Eat All Week–Round 2

When I sat down to meal plan this week, I realized it was going to be one of those weeks where Matt and I wouldn’t cross paths for dinner one single time night this week between our work schedules.  We’re also about to be traveling out of a town a bunch over the next couple weekends and I wanted to try and minimize eating out while we were actually at home, so I decided to fall back on the ol’ cook-once-eat-all-week plan.  I’ve only done it one other time, despite the fact that when I first switched to working 4-10 hour days I swore it was going to be my weekly ritual.  And actually like doing it – it really only takes about half a day to do and then you’re set for the whole week, but it seems to require a lot of prep and mental gearing myself up to do it so I just hadn’t returned to it again.

Here’s the recipes from the first time around I did – they are very chicken-centric but they worked out well as far as using a lot of the same ingredients together.  This time I was lazier – I didn’t want to brainstorm 5 overlapping recipes so I just did a google search to see who had already done this I could just copy.  There were so many options out there – not recreating the wheel was DEFINITELY the way to go and makes me more inclined to continue doing this.

I ended up using a link from Self Magazine.  Here’s the link to the recipes – I won’t retype them here but I’ll just add a few pointers from my experience today in case you {or future me} wants to recreate this.

Here’s what the meal plan includes {and note how little my food actually looks like the photos from the recipes.  Ha.)

Adobo Chipotle Mini Meatloaves – to be served w/ a side green salad or quick bag of steamer veggies

Spicy Thai Soup with Lime Shrimp

Cheesy Beans & Shrimp Enchiladas

Sweet Potato Shepherd’s Pie (Definitely looks nothing like the photo…in fact, I really hope this one tastes better than it looks.)

Vegetable & Chickpea Ragout w/ Penne*

*I purposefully made this one more saucy because I knew Matt would rather have a pasta-sauce type dish than a dish that looked more like pasta and veggies.  I didn’t combine them either b/c I didn’t know at one point during the week would eat them, but I did cook the noodles ahead of time.  (Also, I had to google “ragout” – apparently it is french for stew.  Who knew!)

I can’t speak to how anything tastes yet except the shrimp soup which was very yummy.  My fingers are crossed that the rest turned out as good!  But either way, it beats Lean Cuisines or pick up.

Some pointers:

Start with a clean kitchen and an empty dishwasher.  Get everything out on the counter to start with, including the bowls you’ll need and dishes you’ll put the final dish in.  Clean as you go.  I cannot highlight that step strongly enough!

I know it’s not green but I print the recipes out before hand – it’s just easier for me to have physical pieces of paper when my hands get messy instead of using my iPad to look at the recipes.  I also read through each of them before I started cooking so I had an idea in my mind what I was going to be doing at each step.

I love listening to an audiobook when I’ve got a long task to do like any housework or long cooking prep.  Right now I’m listening to Steve Job’s biography which could seriously last me through cooking about 6 weeks worth of dishes.  Listening seems to make the time go faster and tasks feel less chore-like.  (Oh and the dog treat was to keep Buddy out of my way while I cooked.  It only lasted for about 5 minutes.)

(And in case it’s not obvious, that is water in my wine glass.)

The nice thing about these recipes was the included grocery list and the directions included what order to cook things in.  When I did this the last time I was using my own recipes, so a pre-cooking step was (obviously) to write down all the groceries ahead of time and also to write down the order to cook things in.  There are lots of times when a sauce is simmering or a dish is the oven that you can start it on the next dish.

These dishes also had directions for how to freeze if you weren’t going to use right away.  I just cooked them all and put them in the fridge, because Matt’s more likely to microwave something than put it in the oven when he gets off a shift at midnight.  (Understandably so.)

The whole thing from start to finish only took me three hours.  Really!  And because I forced myself to stick to the clean-as-you-go rule, it was three hours from start to really and truly finished.  This is what my kitchen looked like when the last timer went off.

Hurrah!  And now we have meals for the week.  I’ll try to remember to update as we taste test just in case something doesn’t make the cut – but considering these were published in a magazine, I’m guessing if anything goes wrong it’s operator error.

I must admit though – even though it only took half the morning, it’s still a tiring process.  Even my assistant was wiped out!

Baileywick Black Bean Salsa

I haven't posted a recipe in a long time but this one was too easy and delicious to pass up.  It actually came from a cookbook that my friend Jenny gave me that was put together by parents in the school she teaches in.  (The school is called Baileywick, which is why I call it Baileywick Black Bean Salsa.  I like the alliteration.) 

It is easy- there's some chopping involved, but it took me about 15 minutes to put together.

It's delicious. 

It's healthy.

What's not to love?  Make it and serve it with some scoops as a dip, or else use it to accompany tacos as a side dish or topping.   It probably goes great with margaritas or a Corona.  I'll find out in a few months.  So enjoy and thank Jenny when you're done for passing this cookbook along to me with this little gem in it.  Oh and while I'm bragging on her, let me just mention she was teacher of the year this year at her school.  Because it's my blog and I can brag if I want to. 

Now chop, chill and eat!

Ingredients

• 1 can black beans, rinsed + drained
• 1 can white shoepeg corn, drained
• 1 chopped red pepper
• 1 chopped red onion
• fresh cilantro to taste
• jalapeno, chopped (added to taste)
• juice of 1 lg lime
• 2 T minced garlic
• 1/2 T Adobo brand seasoning*
• 4 T olive oil

Mix all and chill for 1-2 hours (up to overnight.)

*I actually didn’t use the Adobo brand seasoning.  I just used salt and pepper.  But I was shopping in Wally world the other day and was in the international aisle and passed right by it – so it does exist and is easy to find!

And, as a side note…this is the secret best place to buy spices instead of buying them from the baking aisle. 

They don’t have every spice but they have a lot of the common ones – paprika, garlic, onion, parsley, cumin, chili pepper – and they less than a dollar for each bag.  You get a smaller amount, but that’s okay – does anyone ever use the spices in those jars before they go stale anyways??

So, that’s my hidden tip for today.  You’re welcome.  Now, go eat.

Maple & Sea Salt Pecans

I am way, way overdue in posting this but I wanted to share a recipe/tutorial from something I made for Christmas.  (Yes, Christmas – you should see how far back my “to be blogged” folder goes.  Oye.)  Anyways, I wanted to make a food gift to give to the wonderful people at my puppy dog’s daycare who love on him oh so much.  And then recipe turned out to be so good I gave a batch to my father-in-law and I think maybe my brother too.  I lost track of who I gave it to – it was nuts.

Get it?  Nuts?

Okay, sorry.  Onwards!  This was a big hit, and if you want something different from cookies or other sweets to give at the holidays, I’d highly suggest this.

Or to just make for your own eating pleasure. 

The recipe came from Food & Wine magazine.  Here’s the original link but I’ll post directions here too.

Ingredients

• 4 cups pecans
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large egg white, at room temperature

The How To:

• Preheat the oven to 350°. Spread the pecans on a large rimmed baking sheet and toast until they are fragrant, about 10 minutes. Let the pecans cool. Lower the oven temperature to 250°.
• Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, toss the pecans with the maple syrup, butter, salt, cayenne and black pepper. In a medium bowl, whisk the egg white until frothy. Add the egg white to the pecans and toss well.
• Spread the pecans on the lined baking sheets in a single layer. Bake for 40 minutes, until the nuts are golden brown. Immediately loosen the pecans from the paper with a spatula. Let cool completely on the baking sheets before serving.

They can be stored in an airtight container for up to 1 week – if you can resist them that long.

(Glass jars from IKEA)

Party Prep

Seriously, how do you expect me to get anything done when this is happening?

But!  Lots of shower prep work to be done today.  Thank goodness my mom is back to help me.  My mom is superwoman.  We even managed to squeeze a little shopping in to our shower prep...

Katie and I love taking our Mom to Coldwater Creek and helping her pick out outfits, because I guess we both feel a little indebted for all those days when we dragged her into Abercrombie & Fitch or prom dress shopping and she had to stand there while we tried on 8 million things in the dressing room.  (Or worse, broke down in tears because NOTHING FIT WAH WAH WAH.)  But this time, something terrible happened in Coldwater Creek.  I started texting my sister pictures of clothes that I WAS TRYING ON.

And even worse?  She approved.  (Although she said I need to belt it.)

I would like to believe that Coldwater Creek has just gotten hipper.  Not whatever the opposite conclusion would be…

But look at this cute Chambray skirt!  (The top is from there too.)

My mom is probably appalled because what was her "safe" zone for shopping is no more.

The weekend passed by in a blur of pink poufts and melted white chocolate and glue funning, but everything was ready to go for Sunday afternoon!  I am quite certain I could not have done it without my momma there to help, and hopefully she had a teensy bit of fun hanging out with me as we went down my uber-OCD to do list (sorted by date, location and activity.  I’m painful.)

We are ready to party with baby 4c!

Hanging with Mom

It's been such a fun weekend with my momma here visiting.  I bet she had no idea she would come to visit and I would put her to work.  That'll teach her to visit!  Hopefully she had as much fun as I did...

Hot glue gunning...

Cooking...

More cooking... this time for Matt & our 2 neighbors who are doing the deck construction...

She left this morning to go down to Charlotte to hang out with Katie.  It's much easier to say good bye when I know she's only 90 minutes away and that she'll be back in a few days!

Squash Sammies, Again

It’s summer!  Which means gardens overflowing with squash and basil which means…

Squash Sandwiches!

Here’s the recipe (2010) as well as the video tutorial (2009) at the bottom of the page.   Clearly, these are on repeat in our household.

5 Onions, 8 Pounds of Chicken and 2 Dishwasher Loads.

Just your typical Sunday afternoon, right?

I’ve known a couple people who do the “cook all your meals on Sunday” thing and I’ve always had a mixture of apprehension and hesitation about it. It seems like a tremendous amount of work (is it really a time saver?) and that it would be difficult to make healthy meals, as I’ve always pictured casseroles and other dense heavy meals sitting in the freezer.

But lo and behold, here I find myself with 4 recipes on the counter, along with 5 onions, 8 pounds of chicken, and just about every pot and pan in my cupboard out, ready to be put to work. I genuinely love cooking, and furthermore, believe that most of the time, home cooked meals are healthier than restaurants meals. (They are, certainly, exceptions to this. Especially in the South.) BUT, as of March, I’m going to be switching to a 4-day work week and the 10 hour days, combined with a 40 minute commute both ways- which means I’ll be getting home pretty late most nights. Add a trip to the gym or an errand after work, and I could already forsee it wasn't going to be realistic to assume I’d be cooking on a regular basis at night. Lest we become on first name basis with the folks at Jersey Mike’s down the street, I decided to tackle the Sunday cook-a-thon – and since I will now have a 3rd day off every week (woohoo!), I figure it could very well be a good time investment.

I gave it a test run this weekend, and while it didn’t go perfectly, it was overall pretty successful. I cooked for 7 hours, used every pot and pan I own, chopped enough onions to give watching Stepmom a run for the cryfest title, and had to run the dishwasher twice. I didn’t quite pick out enough variety in my meals (all chicken, oops) and they weren’t the healthiest things in my repertoire BUT….

When all is said and done, I had 5 meals with 4 servings (10 meals for 2) PLUS I was able to take 3 2 servings meals to my next door neighbors, who just had a baby. So, 16 meals in 7 hours? Not bad.

Kitchen: After…. Oh dear.

It’s going to take me a while to perfect this strategy, but overall I think it’s going to work and I’m pleased with the solution instead of subjecting us to takeout or quick heat meals just because we're busy.

Here’s what I made:

• 6 grilled chicken breasts to top on salads or chop up and take for lunch w/ some pre-cooked whole grain pasta
• White Bean Chicken Chili
• Chicken Tetrazzini (one for now, one to freeze, one to give away)
• Chicken Pot Pie (one for us, one to give away)
• Shredded Chicken with a Buffalo Sauce to add to the slow cooker the day we want to eat it; to be made into sammies

Since it was the Sunday before Valentine’s Day, part of my prep was also making our Valentine’s Day dinner: seared steaks, roasted asparagus with proscuitto, twice baked potatoes and this delicious chocolate espresso cheesecake that was made mostly of cottage cheese. Not kidding. And I’m telling you that now, because my hubby has already eaten it and now he can know. Hi, honey!

All in all, this actually ended up being about 2 week’s worth of food, because we’re starting the 2nd week and we still haven’t finished it all up. I’ve even taken it for a lunch a few times, and it’s been a nice change of pace from my usual winter meal, turkey sandwiches.

The key to being able to do this, I think, is to be okay with eating the same thing a few times during the week. (Or making smaller portions, or freezing 1/2 of each dish.) I have no problem eating the same meal a few days in a row, but I’ve definitely talked to a few people about this strategy who were horrified at the idea of having chicken tetrazzini more than once in a week. *Shrugs*. If you’ve got the time to cook every night, then there's probably no reason to employ this other than to save time. I've never attempted the cook-a-thon until l I was faced with the alternative of not having time to cook and knowing that we would get into the habit of picking up meals or relying on quick and easy, more processed foods. I'd rather have some repeats than rely on those.

Some tips if you attempt this:

• Plan ahead: Pick your recipes ahead of time, and look for things that have overlapping ingredients. I definitely took this one a bit too far with all chicken recipes, but besides that the ones I picked out also all had green peppers, chicken broth and onion in them. This allowed me to use up ingredients among the recipes.
• Start with an empty dishwasher: Keep it open and load as you go. This helps keep clutter off the counter and it will make clean up less daunting.
• Batch task: I learned this skill when I worked at GapKids and it has helped me in so many situations! Group like tasks together. For example, pull out all ingredients first. Measure out dry ingredients. Chop all vegetables at once. Then prep all meat. When you have a break (when something is cooking or simmering) wash dishes as you go.
• Prep snacks and other meals too. You’ve already got the kitchen dirty. Now is a perfect time to pre-chop veggies or salad mix. I bought a 3 pack of a peppers and only needed the green pepper and half the red pepper for my meals. The yellow and other half of the red ended up in strips to go with hummus for snacks later.
• Listen to music! Whenever I have a long task to do, like cleaning the house or walking the dog or cooking, my iPod has been my saving grace. A little music, or even a book on tape can distract me enough that the hours fly by and the job gets done. I spent the first hour of my cooking bonanza listening to a church sermon, the middle 3 listening to Pandora radio (“Club Can’t Handle Me Right Now” station – hello, dancing in the kitchen) and the last 3 listening to the book “The Help.” I also like to download (free!) lectures from iTunes University or interesting podcasts. But whatever you do: dont watch TV and cook. I have learned this over and over again. Well, maybe this is just me – but I get so distracted by the show, I end up working slower and it takes me twice as long to do everything.
• Have an assistant. Even a furry one.

Keep your eyes on the prize. Even though I wasn’t working late this week, it was still so nice to do things after work and know that there was a home cooked meal to be had that night. On Monday and Thursday, I went for a run. On Tuesday, I did my final Christmas return and went to a dance class with Jamie and Anne. On Wednesday, I worked til 8 and on Friday, I crashed with a DVRed How I Met Your Mother and some crafting. Tonight, we’ll probably go out for dinner… because we want to. Not because we have to. And that’s exactly how I’d hope it would be.