all-American

My dinner was as patriotically all-American as this song.

All-American step one:

Hot dogs! I broiled the dogs and the buns (which were whole wheat and only so so), and I cut up a dog for me, planning to not eat the whole thing. We always get Hebrew National, our rationale being that they’re all beef and that maybe having a rabbi there stops at least SOME disgustingness from getting in. They are much better than regular hot dogs, in my opinion, but not low-calorie by any stretch of the imagination.

So here was my cute mini dog:"

1/2 a bun, a coupla chunks, and mustard. I did have a few more bits, but it only added up to half a dog. They were also HUGE hot dogs!

The rest of the meal was HEAVENLY FARMER’S MARKET PRODUCE! First we have some corn:

Thank you for the corn, Native Americans!

This corn was SO sweet and perfect! It is definitely corn season! I can’t wait to get more!

Finally, tomato salad:

 

It takes so few ingredients to make me so very happy. Tomato. Salt. Pepper. Basil. Balsamic vin. Olive oil. Boom. Perfection.

All together:

the value of preparation

Today I ate good food and didn’t have to do any “cooking”. There are times when I get the itch to cook, but today, the first day with my campers, was definitely not one of them. Yay for already grilled, already baked, already dressed, already etc.’d food.

To rewind, following classy Sunday Dinner, I had a classy Dessert Plate. Cause why should one have to choose between banana cake and red velvet? They were small slices. Use the salad fork to gauge scale.

Breakfast this morning was quite delicious.

 

Half of one of the yummy biscuits from last night, shmeared with lingonberry preserves

And a bowl 'o shredded wheat, milk, and naner and strawberries. I generally hate mushy cereal, but looooooooove mushy shredded wheat.

I then lovingly prepared a gorgeous lunch, also using the lovely ingredients in my home.

So then the cat got the stupid sandwich and I had to yell at him and throw him outside and cut off a chunk that was contaminated. Then I went ahead and left the whole thing on my front stoop, aaaaaaaargh!

So here is a beautiful lunch that I will be eating TOMORROW:

In the background is yogurt and apple (and, incidentally, our kitchen scale!). In the foreground is a beeeyoootiful sandwich- leftover roast chicken, avocado and lettuce on a whole wheat pita. Man, I was so stoked for this lunch. Stupid, stupid cat. Him distracting me led to the forgetting.

So instead I got lunch at work. I work in Section 8 housing… not a lot of gourmet delis about. I went to the Giant across the street and got their salad bar. Actually, though, they had beets. I love beets. That was nice.

Dinner was leftovers. Leftovers are the BEST!

Spinach/beet greens pies. This is from round 2 of the pie making, when I was out of the horrible dough and just started rolling stuff up in phyllo.

They were tasty! Check out the oniony, herby greeny innards:

Leftover barbecued meatballs:

From now on I am totally always grilling meatballs! They were smoky and moist and flavorful! I swear, grilling is the perfect cooking technique. You impart TONS of flavor while adding NO fat (in fact, you lose some to the fire!)

Finally, rice salad left over from the 4th of July cookout. Rice, peppers, red and green onions, currants, peas, herby vinaigrette. It is my mom’s default cookout/picnic contribution. It’s good!

All together:

This is really only a teeny preview of what I ate. Add another spinach pie and a half, another meatball, and tonnnnnn more rice salad. I was just SO HUNGRY! I hadn’t eaten since lunch at 12:30 (and dinner was at 7), I’d been chasing kids around all day, everything tasted good… I just decided I wanted rather than to be not super hungry anymore I wanted to be filled and satisfied. I am still not 100% good about eating intuitively—I find myself unintentionally still in diet and calorie counting mode. It felt really good to eat a tasty dinner and eat til I was good and satisfied. No, it wasn’t whole grains. No, it wasn’t super lean beef. But it was real food, and it fed me!

Sunday dinner

Is a nice tradition.

Ma and I spent the afternoon companionably shelling peas. There is something so soothing about tasks like that- I also love paring green beans as a family.

 

And fresh peas are just so beautiful and awesome.

The whole house smells wonderful right now. The reason?

For me, for the smell that most connotes warmth and happiness and family and comfort, it’s hard to beat roast chicken. My mom roasted this very simply- put a pat of butter on the top, a few sprigs of fresh oregano and a coupla cloves of garlic in the cavity, roast and baste, and at the last minute squeeze some lemon on top. Simple and delicious.

My contribution to the meal was these beauties:

I’ve been craving biscuits ever since Astrid made such beautiful ones. Since we had leftover buttermilk from the red velvet cake, I wanted to use a recipe to incorporate that, and came up with this recipe. Good Lord was it good.

Perfectly flaky, heavenly buttery flavor with just a hint of sweetness, beautifully crisped and golden on the bottom. I loooooooooooove biscuits, and I’m delighted that a healthy recipe can taste as good as the trans fat nightmares. Because not gonna lie, the trans fat nightmares are delicious. But SO ARE THESE!

Mom made the peas real simple like, I think just butter salt and pepper.

  

Peas, biscuits, roast chicken… PERFECT SUNDAY DINNER!

And my other favorite thing about roast chicken… HOMEMADE CHICKEN STOCK!

Chicken bones+ veggie scraps+ water= heaven!

weekend of delicious

Delicious part 1:

As promised, grilled eggplant sammiches!

Heated up some whole wheat pitas and the grilled eggplant in foil in the oven…

Combined with my current favorite hummus recipe.

 

Voila! Smoky and heavenly.

I love fresh fruit in the summer. It’s like all I want to eat.

And iced tea is the perfect summer beverage (and it’s yummy with a hint of lime!)

I went to my dad’s for dinner on the 3rd. No pictures, sorry! However, we grilled, because that’s what I do now!

I used Kath's technique of microwaving the vegetables until they’re almost soft and then grilling them to get a nice sear, which worked BEAUTIFULLY (the veggies of choice were taters and red peppers), and then we made this recipe for thai-styled mussels and this recipe for marinated shrimp. Both were FANTASTIC! Grilling seafood is surprisingly easy and tasty!

Now for the 4th. Pretty much every year we go to the neighborhood where my mom grew up and where her sisters still live to celebrate. The man my mom lovingly refers to as the “local pyromaniac” has been totally obsessed with fire/fireworks/blowing stuff up since he was my age. He’s now in his late 60s, but still goes nuts with the illegal fireworks from Pennsylvania, ostensibly to impress his grandchildren. It’s always a lot of fun!

At my family events, we always have ridiculous amounts of food. Here’s about 2/3 of the table (there was more, plus appetizers, plus sangria!)

And my plate:

Hot dog, nice and blistery (I crave a hot dog about a grand total of once a year, so this was perfect), bread salad with heirloom tomatoes (yum!), shrimpies, a mini spinach and beet greens pie (I made them and they were a royal pain and I’m never making them again), Caesar salad, fruit salad, potato salad, baked beans. Delish!

At a certain point early in the day on the 4th we remembered it was my other aunt’s birthday. While my aunt who was hosting ran out for a bakery cake (in front, held by my adorable cousin Kayla), my mom (in back, in the Al Gore tshirt, hahahaha) appropriated the red velvet cake she had already made into a birthday cake. So Joanne got 2 cakes!

This was my mom’s first time making red velvet cake. She’s a great baker, but usually never has time to bake what with the full time high stress job and all. However, she decided that she’d always wanted to make red velvet cake, and what better occasion than America’s birthday!

It was deeeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiiiiiiiish. So moist! She used  this recipe, if anyone wants to try it, with the frosting from this recipe. Beauuuuuuteous!

Today for post-church brunch I appropriated some of the leftover spinach-beet greens filling from the nightmare mini pies (they ended up tasting good, but the dough was like CHEWING GUM! I COULD NOT ROLL IT OUT!), and scrambled it with some mushrooms and eggs.

That was delicious, as were the strawberries on the side. The toast I had made earlier in the week and I tried to revive it but it was too stale. So I pitched most of it and made this:

Oatmeal with banana and dried apricots. Mmm mm mm.

grill, baby, grill!

So you know how women tend to be scared of the grill? Well that is a gross generalization but speaking from personal experience there is something about a grill (and I’m talking about a proper grill with charcoal, cause I’m sorry, gas doesn’t give you that heavenly smell), that conjures images of a Real Man doing it. And in the past, I have been intimidated.

But enough is enough! Women can do everything men can! Hasn’t Governor Palin, the inspiration behind the title of today’s post, taught us that?

So… I grilled!

Grilling is EASY! But, admittedly, also coooomplicated. There were steps. Prepping helps.

Here’s my veggie prep station:

Eggplants salting (I grilled the eggplant today for sammiches tomorrow- stay tuned!), parsley for the meatballs (we had a pound and a half of ground beef and it was just me and my mom for dinner tonight—clearly that was more than enough for two burgers, so I made meatballs- also destined for a future appearance), and finally for the burgers themselves, fresh oregano from the deck planter for the patties, onions and shrooms for toppings.

The onions and shrooms became a foil packet that went on the grill, since they were too small to grill on their owney, aww.

Back to the meatballs, they were easy peasy! I took homemade bread crumbs (garlic bread goes stale= easy garlic breadcrumbs!) and soaked ‘em in water, mixed those, and the grated onion, those white chunks)…

… with the parsley, fresh garlic, salt and pepper, and all but 8 oz of the ground beef, and made balls. The original plan was to make them a foil packet too, so I laid ‘em out:

And I got my prep tray set, which made me feel like a total pro:

Eggplant plus olive oil for brushing, packets for the grill, TONGS!

Then I started up the grill, ON FIRE!

Yeah, um, that’s not enough charcoal. No big, I just added more, did more lighter fluid and another match. I adapted BEAUTIFULLY to the only MINOR challenge grilling gave me. Seriously, men love lording it over us, but if they can do it, IT’S EASY. GRILLING IS EASY.

I grilled up the eggplant first.

  

So beauuuuuuuuuuteous! Here’s the final plate:

 

I see smoky sandwiches in my future, YAY!

The foil packet was just working weirdly with the meatballs (plus they were rendering a lot of fat) so I tried just putting them on the grill and they stayed together and caramelized beautifully!

Since my mom was taking her SWEET TIME coming home from work, and I knew we should probably have some kind of side dish, ideally of the green vegetable persuasion, and since I was in love with grilling at that point, I thought hey, baby bok choy!

And it was fantastic! I can’t say enough good things about grilled baby bok choy. It’s already so pleasantly smoky, and grilling just enhances that!

So then the mother finally showed up, and I got the burgers on the grill! Oh, the thrill!

I am a purist with burgers. Ground beef, salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and fresh oregano. All you need.

My adorable mom bought me whole wheat burger buns, cause I’m a ridiculous person. But they were really good! Pepperidge farm brand. Her burger, con queso, mine sin.

Topped with hot sauce and, lest we forget, mushroom and onions that at this point were CARAMELIZED AND SWEET AND HEAVENLY!!!!!!!

This was seriously one of the BEST BURGERS I HAVE EVER TASTED, and I GRILLED IT ALL BY ME ONESIE!

The beefy, smokey burger (cooked PERFECTLY, if I do say so myself, still retaining its moisture), combined with the zesty spicy hot sauce and the SWEET SWEET WONDERFUL CARAMELIZED onions and mushrooms and the nice doughy yet grill-crisped bread… it was perfect!

I kept making loud exclamations! I didn’t want it to end!

So yes, I have conquered the grill. How does one move on?

tidbits

This is a mini post. To be followed by a massive post. But here are some things I’ve been eating!

Breakfast, still sick:

Oatmeal with currants/craisins blend and walnuts on top, tea, and an Orange Fizz. If you are sick, an Orange Fizz will cure you. It’s the best. My mama made them for me throughout my years and years of strep throat.

Orange juic+club soda+dash of angostura bitters (yeah I know classy!)+ ice. Fizz, citrus, vitamin C. Feels SO GOOD in your throat!

Here’s breakfast, back to health at last, this morning:

 

Somewhat misleading, because breakfast was in two courses. First was a bowl of Smart Start and milk. Then EXERCISE for the first time in almost a week, praise be, in the form of a 3 mile walk in the morning sunshine and mist (it rained last night) in the park. Heavenly. This was breakfast 2, TJ’s nonfat Euro with cantaloupe and strawberry. Beautiful and delicious.

Lunch was fun nibbles:

More Island Eggplant, crackers ‘n Meunster, a hardboiled egg, and for snackin’ later, my favorite easy homemade trail mix, just Craisins and almonds.  

I’m being wooed by Teach for America. Here’s what they sent me:

     

Candy plus reading material! It’s like they know me!

And finally, edible souveniers:

Sesame-honey covered almonds and DRIED KIWI from Crete! The dried Kiwi, in addition to being beautiful and unusual, is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted.