Recipes

Today is my mamma’s birthday!

She really is the best mother out there. She spent 40+ years selflessly raising four kids, a 5th foster child, a small handful of foreign exchange students, a plethora of pets, and a slew of said kid’s friends across two continents and several countries and states, all of whom are competent human beings, contribute positively to society in some way or another, and don’t publicly shame our good family name too much. So I think we all turned out pretty darn well…and we’re a handsome group of devils, which has to count for something. But this is all due to excellent parenting. Anyway, she’s also smart, loving, grounded, faithful, generous, funny, a good cook, a great friend, well-traveled, multi-talented, beautiful, and a lot of other important and wonderful things too. Her birthday is the day after mine (I obviously needed my own birthday and couldn’t wait another six hours), but now as an adult I kind of wish we shared a birthday so we could have one more special thing between us (not that I don’t love my own birthday, want to intrude on her own personal special day, or that birthdays one day apart isn’t special enough). And now that I don’t live in Texas anymore, I always hope that one day we’ll be in the same place at the end of August so we can celebrate together. But anyway, she’s the greatest and it’s her birthday! So I’m wishing her another year (plus many more besides) full of love, good health, blessings, prosperity, travels, adventures, great experiences, and togetherness with the family and friends who love her most. Happy birthday, Mom!

And Sunday the 25th was this dude’s birthday.

We pretty much own August in this family. Once I wised up to the fact that his birthday was the day before mine, I knew I had to marry him. I mean, what’s not to love? He’s a multi-talented lighting and theatre/entertainment production guru, he puts up with my curious adventuring shenanigans, he makes up really funny and genius song lyrics all the time, finds joy in “gizzard fest” and, with the exception of my love for new or unusual food/ever constant desire for traveling and wanderlust/need to take every animal I see home with us/affection for trying new things all the time, he basically appreciates all the same fun and weird things I do (so, in other words, we compliment each other’s strengths and weaknesses well). But, most importantly, he has that late August birthday.

And because we live in the same place, we do get to celebrate together! But rather than buy each other gifts for birthdays and holidays, we like to experience things and spend time together instead. So, on Saturday evening – since it was in the low 70s and simply gorgeous out – we had an inexpensive special joint birthday dinner by grilling steaks (which were seriously fantastic) and fresh, local purple potatoes and corn, paired with a delicious farmers market yellow watermelon and a special August-only local sweet white wine, in our backyard, and then at nightfall we used a birthday coupon for some free house-made ice cream and waffle cones at a local ice cream joint in Webster.

On Sunday we brunched on awesome breakfast sandwiches at the farmers market, and then in the afternoon I made Ted his favorite birthday cake – a really delicious pineapple upside down cake – and we ordered a pizza and rented Ted’s choice movie 42 about Jackie Robinson, which was a really, really great and enjoyable movie that we highly recommend. Of course, we lit candles, sang happy birthday, and opened cards too. :)

The pineapple upside down cake recipe can be found here, and with a thick coating of homemade caramel at the bottom (or top I suppose?), it is good. Like, really, really good. I did add Maraschino cherries (which the recipe did not call for) to the centers of the pinapple slices because Ted loves the cherries, and I baked it in a shortening-greased 9″ springform pan because I don’t have a cast iron skillet, which was actually pretty perfect because it made it insanely easy to remove the cake from the pan and turn it upside down. If you make this cake I would caution you that the cake probably only needs 38-40 minutes in the oven instead of 45 (depending on your oven), and also to place an oven-safe cookie pan with short edges under the springform pan because the caramel will leak out as it bakes and you really don’t want gooey caramel all over your oven. But this recipe is a winner.

Onto the pics!

 Happy Birthday to all my favorite August folks!

The past few weeks we’ve received an enormous amount of sugar snap peas in our weekly CSA share, along with a beautiful bunch of red and purple radishes that I had no idea what to do with. Enter the snap pea & radish salad, an unexpected, wonderful, fresh, summery dish that received rave reviews at our summer conservatory late night casting session and the beach picnic I brought it to.

Ingredients:

• Sugar snap peas
• Radishes, sliced
• Fresh mint leaves, chopped
• Fresh mozzarella cheese ball, crumbled
• Vinaigrette dressing: lemon juice, olive oil, rice or white wine vinegar, salt, pepper

Directions:

Mix peas, radishes, mint and mozzarella in one dish. In another, mix together the ingredients for the vinaigrette. Keep both refrigerated separately until serving time. Combine, serve, enjoy, gracefully accept compliments on the awesome dish, and refrigerate any leftovers. On the off chance you do have leftovers, once the vinaigrette has been mixed into the salad, it’s best to use it all that day.

So healthy, so flavorful, so good! I think the secret is in the mint. It seems like an oddball combination, but it was so delicious and a definite hit among the masses. If you’re looking for something insanely easy and healthy to bring to a summer potluck that nobody else will likely bring too, this may be your ticket! Share the wealth :)

Inspired by the amazing looking and smelling shaved asparagus pizza my friend Becca was eating for lunch on Friday at work (made with the asparagus from the CSA share we’re splitting), I literally could not help myself and decided to make the same recipe this past weekend.

Mind-blowing doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Thanks for the inspiration and recipe-sharing, Becca!

I used this homemade olive oil pizza dough recipe, and adapted this shaved asparagus pizza recipe. I stuck to the pizza recipe almost exactly except that I used liberal amounts of fresh mozzarella and fresh shaved Parmesan (because “there’s too much cheese on this pizza” has never been uttered from my mouth) and, because I have a mad love affair with Boursin (a soft garlic and herb cheese), I added hunks of Boursin to the pizza as well. I also substituted the scallions for fresh chopped garlic. It was incredible. Easily the best pizza I have ever made. I have extra dough leftover in my freezer and extra cheese and asparagus so I will be making it again very, very soon. Even if you think you won’t like this pizza, you should try it anyway. I think you’ll be just as impressed as I was.

And because I was on a roll (and because a bolt of lightening/crash of thunder struck so close to the house that I literally lost my mind with terror and decided that if I was going to out with the lightening, I was at least going to die with a belly full of awesomeness), I baked these whole peach individual pies, and took it a step further by topping it with a scoop of fresh vanilla bean ice cream.

Best food day ever: I win.

And now you know the secrets of food greatness, so you can win too…lucky you :)

1 part tap dance class

+

1 part campfire, melted campfire cone goodness, beer, and girlfriends

=

Monday night done right!

Amen.

If you’ve never made yourself a campfire cone stuffed with chocolate, caramel, butterscotch, marshmallows, nuts, toffee, MnMs, coconut, etc. (and preferably topped with butter pecan or vanilla bean ice cream!) roasted over an open fire with a cold beer sitting right beside you…you should get on that immediately.

Also, I don’t say this nearly enough, but I feel SO LUCKY to have made such incredible friends in Rochester. These ladies really are the best. I had a lot of acquaintances and great, fun work friends (with whom I only occasionally got together with outside of work) in Cincinnati, but I also really struggled for nearly two years to find a solid group of friends in Cincinnati as a newlywed, in a new state, intent on spending time with her new husband and building her career, and working with people mostly younger (as in, still in college or recent college grads) than I was, who had vastly different agendas, priorities, and work ethics than I did. And, with the exception of my wonderful Allyson, I never really did make those true blue friends. And it left a void in my otherwise wonderful existence. It felt like something was missing. I definitely worried about how I’d make friends, knowing absolutely nobody, when I learned I’d be moving to Rochester. Finding good friends gets exponentially more challenging after college, I think. But almost instantly I was welcomed by these ladies. And within a few months I had a solid core group of friends – from work, from book club, from church, from random happenstance meetings – from all over. They are wonderful and strong and talented and passionate and adventurous and whip smart and funny and compassionate and a complete joy to be around. And I feel really grateful to have them. All of them.

I’ve been reading a lot about food lately. Food is one of my great loves. Plus the articles just keep popping up on social networking, news sites, and Pinterest daily. They’re kind of hard to avoid.

More-so than ever, I’ve been reading articles about the dangers of the chemicals in anything not organic and how they do terrible things to your system and will kill you, how the chemicals in meat are not meant to be ingested by humans and they are making a new medication to combat that chemical for non-vegetarians before it kills you, how dairy isn’t good for you and you should be looking solely toward dairy-free alternatives for all your milk, cheese, yogurts, etc that won’t kill you., how all nuts and dried fruits we eat should be entirely salt, real sugar, and artificial sugar free before the salt, sugar, and “sugar” kills you, how takeout and fast food under any and all circumstances – no matter how rarely – is like injecting toxins directly into your body and will kill you, how we should eat nothing processed at all because they will kill you, how carbs should only come from fruits and vegetables because the other kind will kill you, and how vegetable oil and butter should be completely eliminated and olive oil consumption drastically reduced lest it kill you.

To this I say: ENOUGH.

I love food. I love cooking and I love eating. I love cooking and eating and drinking with friends and family. I love that food can simultaneously nourish us and bring us together. I love fresh, healthy, flavorful ingredients. I love a simple bite of homegrown tomato fresh off the vine and complex pairings of tomatoes and herbs and oils and meats and cheeses that create an explosion of flavor. I love uncomplicated classics and I love experimenting with the intricate and the exotic foods of the world.

And, for the record, I do believe that by putting a wide variety of healthier foods into our bodies we feel better, look better, and are healthier. I believe in trying to fill your basket with as many fresh items straight from nature as possible. Because they’re delicious, but also because they help your body do what it needs to do. And it would be great if they didn’t have chemicals on them to help keep the pests away and preserve them, but they do and that’s life.

But I also believe in eating delicious cheese often because it is, in fact, very delicious. I believe in bread, in juicy steaks, BBQ, and cold dairy-laden ice cream, in a damn Cheeze-It or Oreo or every now and then, in non-organic watermelon, in a margarita on the rocks, in trying food from all the other countries that we share the globe with, in Chipotle and Subway and Wendy’s and even Five Guys a few times a year if you’re feeling feisty, in almonds that maybe have been candied or salted for a change, AND in olive oil or cooking spay to sautee my dinner with.

How on Earth did people survive before all these helpful articles told us about the very few things we are allowed to eat safely, and all the hundreds of thousands of things we shouldn’t eat!?

I have one word: moderation.

Oh, and I have one more word: ENOUGH.

So, before I left for Wisconsin I decided to try a new style of eating for a week: completely non-processed with all fresh produce and grains, and no alcohol, caffeine, sugar, dairy, red meat, wheat, and minimal salt…just to see how I’d feel. And I did it! I usually eat healthy, just not this extreme, but I’m proud I stuck it out.

It all tasted good, and I felt good afterward. But I spent hours preparing meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack, and dessert every single night. It was crazy time consuming, I never once made it to bed before 1 a.m., my back hurt from all the time in the kitchen, and overall – it just didn’t feel good enough to justify the effort. The flavored waters were fun – it helped me drink as much water as I should every day, and they tasted great, so I’ll keep those in steady rotation…and I’ll likely make some of the recipes again too in the future, because they were all good (my favorites are marked “winner”). But this is not a lifestyle that one easily can, or in my humble opinion, really should, keep up with full-time. A fun trial, but in the future I’ve determined I can still eat fresh and healthy without skipping out on all the delicious stuff I listed above and still save myself a ton of time, energy, and sleep. Also, Ted would eat none of this. So he would basically starve if I ever attempted this tomfoolery again when he is living here.

{lemon, cucumber, mint, and rosemary water – winner}

{breakfast smoothie: mango, banana, strawberry, chia seeds, almond coconut milk, fresh tangerine juice, spinach – winner}

{warm grapefruit tea: freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, agave, cinnamon, all spice – winner}

{trail mix – winner}

{roasted chickpeas with vegetable oil, cumin, ginger, coriander, paprika, and salt – winner}

{chia seed pudding with almond coconut milk, chia seeds, pure vanilla extract, blueberries, and mango}

{roasted acorn squash glazed with maple syrup and stuffed with quinoa, shallots, pecans, spinach, rosemary, and pear}

{baked white fish tilapia in spiced broth with quinoa, garlic, shallots, ginger, coriander, cayenne pepper, yellow squash, tomatoes, and cilantro leaves – winner}

{black beans with sauteed tilapia, lime, and cilantro}

{quinoa with carrots, zucchini, artichoke, lemon, and shallots}

{sauteed kale and pinto beans with garlic and shallots – winner}

{and this one came after the trial experiment, hence the corn tortilla and cheese…but Ted still won’t eat it, so in this post it goes! cumin roasted butternut squash with black beans, NY state sharp white cheddar, cilantro leaves, lime, and a sriracha, agave and apple cider vinegar sauce in a corn tortilla – winner}

{views from the epic Mexican fun lunch of tacos, salads, rice, beans, quesadillas, dessert nachos, and all the fixings that we all contributed to at work a few weeks ago…and that’s not even all of it. It was amazing. Now this Ted would eat!}

{a good thought with some merit, but not of total truth. perhaps what inspired my experiment?}

Strawberry rosemary scones. A copy-cat recipe of a rosemary scone from a Rochester bakery I tried a few weeks ago and fell in love with. Made a batch this week and they were delicious! Recipe here.

Salad: Kale, white wine infused quinoa, lemon garlic rosemary grilled chicken, shallots, blueberries, raw pumpkin seeds, grapefruit, and topped with a dressing of salt, pepper, grapefruit juice and a drizzle of olive oil. Easy, filling, flavorful and healthy. Of my own twisted creation. Apparently detox diet friendly, I’ve been told.

Rambutan fruit! Not the most glorious or appetizing picture of this exotic red Malaysian fruit, but it is sweet and juicy like a grape and tastes really, really great. Just don’t eat the big seed in the middle. Supposedly, it’s mildly toxic. But don’t let that scare you away from this wonderful dessert fruit. I had several this week and plan to stock up on more.

Seasoned sauteed tilapia over quinoa with cilantro and mango, and a handful of olive oil, salt and pepper roasted brussel sprouts with a garlic, lemon and cayenne aioli dipping sauce. Recipe of my own fridge-clearing creation.

Prickly Pear fruit (you know, the pretty fruit flower on top of cactus?) topped with a dallop of whip cream and a sprinkling of chili power to cut the sweetness. Not sure I’d love it plain as it is very sweet, but it tastes absolutely divine when paired with a bit of whip cream and chili power. A totally flavorful and balanced delectable combination. Be warned: I’ve been plucking tiny, thin, hair like thorns out of my hands for the past three days straight (wear gloves!) and the seeds are a pain in the butt to work around, though I’ve since learned that the seeds are edible. If you’d like to try it, here are some instructions on how to handle, cut and eat them so you don’t meet the same annoying, sliver-y fate I did.